Induction of Traumatic Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Models in Rat by Using a Novel Device

Spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries (SCI and TBI) are serious emergency situations, associating with sensorimotor deficits and cognitive impairments. The use of standard rodent model, allow for the understanding of these neuronal injuries physiopathology and development of therapeutic strategy. According to contusion type of SCI and mild TBI injuries that are commonly occurred in the human, we designed a novel impactor device with ability to induce different degrees of SCI and TBI in rats. In contrast to previous instruments, this novel device tested in both brain and spinal cord, and wide ranges of injuries from very mild to very severe were induced according to kilodyne. For standardization and determining of optimal performance of the device to induce varying injuries, 8 different forces were applied with low heterogeneity. In our device, technical problems involved in SCI and TBI models were limited as much as possible. The Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E), and 2, 3, 5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) results demonstrated that by increasing the level of forces, histological changes in the spinal cord and brain were significantly enhanced. Different injuries had significant effect on the Basso, Beattie, and Brenham (BBB) and elevated body swing test (EBST) outcomes and there were significant differences between groups in comparison with control group (p<0.05 and p<0.001, respectively). Our results show that the novel device could be valid to produce precise SCI and TBI models, goal to replicate SCI and TBI in humans as much as possible. However, it might be considered that aspects of SCI and TBI models are complicate and more examination is necessary.

Keywords:

Spinal cord injury , Traumatic brain injury , Contusion model