Intermittent Fasting After Spinal Cord Injury Does Not Improve the Spontaneous Recovery of Baroreflex Regulation in the Rat

Abstract

Modest recovery of somatic function after incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI) has been widely demonstrated. Recently we have shown that spontaneous recovery of baroreflex regulation (BR) in rats also occurs. Dietary restriction in the form of every other day fasting (EODF) has been shown to have beneficial effects in the recovery of motor function after SCI. The goal of this study was to determine if EODF augments the spontaneous recovery of BR after chronic, left thoracic (T8) surgical spinal hemisection. To determine this, BR tests were performed on either ad‐lib fed or EODF rats either 1 week or 8 weeks after left, T8 spinal hemisection, or a sham lesion. During BR testing in sham lesioned rats, EODF had no effect on BR compared to rats fed ad‐lib. Therefore, data from these rats were merged into one sham lesioned group. In rats in which BR testing was performed 1 week after spinal hemisection, BR was significantly impaired (P < 0.05) in the ad‐lib but not the EODF rats compared to that of the sham lesioned group. However, in rats in which BR testing was performed 8 weeks after spinal hemisection, EODF did not significantly augment the recovery of BR. While there is evidence to suggest that EODF has beneficial effects on the recovery of motor function in rats, data from this study suggest that although after 1 week EODF appears to improve BR, over the course of 8 weeks EODF does not improve the spontaneous recovery of BR in the rat.