Morphological study on reconsruction of nervous reflex pathway with spinal ventral root anastomoses after spinal cord injury

English Keywords:Spinal cord injury  Nerve anastomosis  Spinal ventral root  Morphology  Rat

English Abstract:

  【Abstract】 Objective：To observe the neural morphology after reconsruction of nervous reflex pathway of quadriceps femoris through spinal ventral root anastomoses after spinal cord injury in rats.Method：Twenty 4-week-old SD rats of 120g to 150g were collected.The left L1 ventral root and L3 ventral root，which mainly dominate quadriceps femoris，were anastomosed end-to-end by coccygeal nerve，while the right side was kept intact.6 months later，neural anastomosis was extracted from experimental rats.The spinal cord at the L2 level was hemitransected to establish the hemitransection model in experimental rats，which could be successfully dissceted.After 4 weeks of breeding，Trueblue（TB） fluorescence reagent was injected into the left femoral nerve and the TB fluorescence marked neural cells was observed in L1 ventral horn.The nerve anastomosis was stained by Hematoxylin and Eosin（HE） staining kit and observed through electronic microscopic.Result：Four rats deseased during breeding，and the neural anastomosis could be successfully extracted from the 10 experimental rats.The neural anastomosis showed round，smooth and non-atrophic under naked eye.Under microscope the new regenerating neural fiber of anastomosis lined in sequence and uniformity by HE staining，which was the classic medullated nerve fibers.The anastomoses fiber presented with the characteristic of common neural axon.The TB fluorescence marked neural cells appeared on the left side of L1 ventral horn and something like somatic motor nerve cell morphologically，while no TB marked cell appeared on the right side.Conclusion：New paraspinal pathway of quadriceps femoris can be established by L1-L3 spinal ventral roots anastomosis after spinal cord injury at L2 level hemitransection in rats.