Abstract:

Objective
To explore the combined effect of methylprednisolone (MP),electro-acupuncture and  amniotic epithelial cells  (AECs)  transplantation  on axon-plasma transporting function in rats with spinal cord injury(SCI),and provide a more effective method to clinical therapy for SCI.Methods Sixty female Wistar rats were randomly divided into  to 5 groups (n=12).SCI control group: no treatment after SCI was created.MP group: MP pulse treatment after SCI,for 3 d.MP and electro-acupuncture group: electro-acupuncture treatment on Hua Tuo Jiaji acupoint 4 h after SCI,based on MP group.MP,Electro-acupuncture and AECs group: rat AECs transplantation treatment in SCI region 7 d after SCI based on MP and electro-acupuncture group.Sham group: neural scute was opened and spinal cord was exposed without SCI.Ethological observation (BBB scores) was performed every 6 d.Fluorescein red (FR) anterograde tagging and GFAP immunofluorescence histochemistry observation were performed on the 30th day after operation.Results BBB scores revealed that functional recovery diversity of the hind limb was seen in every therapy group after SCI,and the MP,electro-acupuncture and AECs group was the best and the score was 15.23±1.01 on the 30th day.As revealed by FR anterograde tagging,MP,electro-acupuncture and AECs group contained numerous ordinary FR-positive axons,and neural labelled compound could be transported to the far distant area of  SCI region distal end,the number of FR-positive axons of  SCI region were 312.67±34.06 under fluorescence microscope（×100）,the differences between MP,electro-acupuncture and AECs group and other therapy groups were statistically significant（P＜0.01）.GFAP revealed that the quantity of GFAP positive astrocytes in each injured group was increased obviously than sham operation group and MP,electro-acupuncture and AECs group listed the least,the number of GFAP positive astrocytes of  SCI region was 633.61±54.4 under  fluorescence microscope（×200）,there were significant differences between MP,electro-acupuncture and AECs group and other therapy groups（P＜0.01）.Conclusion A combination of methylprednisolone,electro-acupuncture and AECs transplantation can restrain hyperplasy of horizontal cells,promote the recovery of axon-plasma transporting function and the regeneration of axons in SCI rats.

Key words: methylprednisolone；electro-acupuncture；amniotic epithelial cells axon-plasma transporting；glial fibrillary acidic protein