Water treadmill training attenuates blood-spinal cord barrier disruption in rats by promoting angiogenesis and inhibitin
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Fluids and Barriers of the CNS Open Access
RESEARCH
Water treadmill training attenuates blood‑spinal cord barrier disruption in rats by promoting angiogenesis and inhibiting matrix metalloproteinase‑2/9 expression following spinal cord injury Xinwang Ying1, Qingfeng Xie1, Shengcun Li1, Xiaolan Yu1, Kecheng Zhou1, Jingjing Yue1, Xiaolong Chen1, Wenzhan Tu1, Guanhu Yang1 and Songhe Jiang1,2*
Abstract Background: The permeability of the blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB) is mainly determined by junction complexes between adjacent endothelial cells (ECs), including tight junctions (TJs) and adherens junctions (AJs), which can be severely damaged after spinal cord injury (SCI). Exercise training is a recognized method for the treatment of SCI. The destruction of the BSCB mediated by matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) leads to inflammation, neurotoxin production, and neuronal apoptosis. The failure of new blood vessels to effectively regenerate is also an important cause of delayed recovery after SCI. For the first time, we introduced water treadmill training (TT) to help SCI rats successfully exercise and measured the effects of TT in promoting recovery after SCI and the possible mechanisms involved. Methods: Sprague-Dawley (200–250 g) rats were randomly divided into the following three groups: sham operated, SCI, and SCI + T T. Animals were sacrificed at 7 or 14 days post-surgery. The degree of neurological deficit, tissue morphology and BSCB permeability were assessed by the Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan (BBB) motor function scale and appropriate staining protocols, and apoptosis, protein expression and vascular EC ultrastructure were assessed by TUNEL staining, Western blotting, immunofluorescence and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results: Our experiments showed that TT reduced permeability of the BSCB and decreased structural tissue damage. TT significantly improved functional recovery when compared with that in the SCI group; TJ and AJ proteins expression increased significantly after TT, and training reduced apoptosis induced by SCI. TT could promote angiogenesis, and MMP-2 and MMP-9 expression was significantly inhibited by TT. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that TT promotes functional recovery for the following reasons: TT (1) protects residual BSCB structure from further damage, (2) promotes vascular regeneration, and (3) inhibits MMP-2/9 expression to mitigate BSCB damage.
*Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Zhejiang, Wenzhou 325000, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence,
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