The effect of early treadmill exercise on motor function deficits following moderate or severe traumatic brain injury / 中华物理医学与康复杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the effect of early rehabilitation on rats' motor performance after moderate or severe experimental traumatic brain injury (TBI).Methods After adult Sprague-Dawley rats had received moderate or severe TBI,they were randomly assigned to either a 24 hour exercise group (group A),a 3-day exercise group (group B),a 7-day exercise group (group C) or a control group.Each group was composed of 8 rats.The exercise group endured forced treadmill training on an electric treadmill for 14 consecutive days initiated 24 hours,3 days or 7 days post TBI.The foot-fault and cylinder tests were performed on the 6th,12th,18th,24th and 28th day post injury.On the 28th day the rats were sacrificed and the brains were removed and frozen.The frozen coronal brain sections were stained with cresyl violet (CV) for quantitative evaluation of cortical lesion volume.Results The rats in groups B and C showed significant decreases in the percentage of left forelimb foot faults compared with the control group at the 18th,24th and28th day after injury.In addition,the rats of group C demonstrated significant decreases in the percentage of left forelimb foot-fault at the 12th day after injury.There was no significant difference between group A and the control group in terms of foot fault scores in any of the subsequent test sessions.In the cylinder test the forelimb use asymmetry scores of neither group A nor group B were significantly different from the control group.Group C showed marked locomotor asymmetry improvement at day 28 post-injury.There was no significantly different loss of hemispheric tissue between those groups.Conclusion After treadmill exercise for 14 consecutive days initiated at 3 or 7 days following moderate or severe TBI,rats' motor function improved.The cortical lesion volume was not associated with recovery of motor function.