Intramuscular Injection of Adenoassociated Virus Encoding Human Neurotrophic Factor 3 and Exercise Intervention Contribute to Reduce Spasms after Spinal Cord Injury

Figure 2

Injection of AAV-NT3 into the gastrocnemius muscle significantly increased NT-3 in muscle and spinal dorsal root ganglia. (a) The schematic diagram shows the experimental setup. Rats received contusive spinal cord injury and injection of AAV-NT3 or AAV-GFP into hind limb muscles. The proprioceptive reflex of the Ia afferent nerve-mediated single synapse is also shown in the diagram. (b) At 4 weeks after spinal cord injury, the expression of NT-3 in the gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior muscles of hind limbs was detected with western blot. (c) Quantitative analysis of the data in (b) showed that the expression of NT-3 in the muscles of the AAV-NT3 group was significantly higher than in the other two groups. (d) At 4 weeks after spinal cord injury, the expression of NT-3 in the spinal cord L4 to S2 DRG was detected by western blot. (e) Quantitative analysis of the data in (d) showed that the expression of NT-3 in the spinal cord DRG of the AAV-NT3 group was significantly higher than in the other two groups. Data are expressed as the mean ± SD. One-way ANOVA was used to compare AAV-NT3 with AAV-GFP or the control group. .

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)