Botulinum Neurotoxin Application to the Severed Femoral Nerve Modulates Spinal Synaptic Responses to Axotomy and Enhances Motor Recovery in Rats

Figure 5

Analysis of synaptic terminals and microglia in the quadriceps motor nucleus two months after femoral nerve injury and drug application. Asterisks indicate mean values significantly different from all other groups (one-way ANOVA, _2,16 = 11.4 and 30.4, and 0.001 for VGLUT1 and ChAT, resp.) with Holm-Sidak post hoc tests (). per group. Note that numbers of Iba1⁺ cells and ChAT⁺ terminals (b) and numbers of VGLUT1⁺ terminals (a) in BSA-treated animals are much lower than these at 1 week after injury (Figures 3(a) and 3(b)). This is consistent with previous findings [9, 10].

(a)

(b)