An electrophysiologic study of stereotaxis and vena caudalis transplantations of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in treatment of spinal cord injury in rats

Abstract

Objective To compare the effects of stereotaxis and vena caudalis transplantations of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells(BMSCs) in the treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI) in rats.Methods SD rat BMSCs were isolated,purified and proliferated in vitro.Forty-five adult female Wistar rats were used to establish SCI models with aneurysm clips before they were randomly divided into 3 even groups:a control group and stereotaxis and vena caudalis transplantation groups.The SCI was not treated in the control group.Seven days after the SCI,the suspension with BrdU-labeled BMSCs was injected into the SCI site in the stereotaxis transplantation group and into the body through the caudal vein in the vena caudalis transplantation group.Neural electrophysiologic tests were used to compare the effects of the 2 different ways of BMSCs transplantation on the neural recovery of the injured spinal cord in rats.Results There were no significant differences among the 3 groups before establishment of the SCI model and 7 days after the establishment of SCI model regarding the latency and amplitude of evoked potentials (P ＞ 0.05).Thirty days after the establishment of SCI model all the rats showed significantly reduced latency and significantly increased amplitude (P ＜ 0.05).The BMSCs transplantation groups showed significantly shorter motor evoked potential latency and shorter somatosensory evoked potential P1 wave latency than the control group (P ＜ 0.05).The recovery of motor evoked potentials was significantly slower in the vena caudalis transplantation group than in the stereotaxis transplantation group (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions Transplanted BMSCs can survive,migrate in the host spinal cord,leading to significant recovery of neurological function in SCI rats.With the same amount of BMSCs,stereotaxis transplantation may be more effective than vena caudalis transplantation in the SCI treatment in rats. Key words: Bone marrow cells; Spinal cord injury; Stem cell transplantation; Evoked potentials