Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Systemic Therapy of Spinal Cord Injury of Moderate Severity with Human Umbilical Cord Placental Blood Mononuclear Cells Using Indicators of Dispersion of Articular Angles in the Swimming Test.

Female Sprague-Dawley rats were used as models of moderate contusion spinal cord injury to evaluate the efficiency of single systemic (intravenous) infusion of human mononuclear cord blood cells for restoration of the motor function of hind limbs. The dynamics of recovery of hind limb motor function was assessed using a specially designed method based on calculation of selective dispersion and amplitude-dependent dispersion of hind limbs joint angles measured in the swimming test. The obtained data suggest that systemic application of human mononuclear cord blood cells significantly (p<0.05) promoted recovery of hind limb motor function in the animal models of contusion spinal cord injury of moderate severity in comparison with control animals (without cell therapy).

A Method of Assessment of the Motor Function of Hind Limbs by Swim Test in Spinal Cord Injury Models.

In most studies, various load tests are used to assess the recovery of functions after spinal cord injury in animals. However, the existing methods of assessing the movement in animals are not sufficiently accurate and objective. We developed a new method for assessing motor activity of laboratory animals that allows objective and highly accurate evaluation of movements in animals with serious neurological disorders caused by spinal cord injury. The swimming test was used as the main load test. Motor activity of swimming animals was assessed by measuring angles relative to the axis of motion, and the degree of angle spread for each joint and limb was estimated using the dispersion parameters depending on the values of the angles of the joints and the dispersion depending on the amplitudes of the angles. In Sprague-Dawley rats, contusion of the spinal cord at the Th9 level was modeled. In the swimming test, healthy control animals showed stability of both variance indicators over 6 weeks. In rats with spinal cord injury, motor activity of the hind limbs tended to increase from the first to the third weeks and remained at this level from the third to sixth weeks. The results suggest that the proposed method can become a good analogue of modern methods for assessing motor activity.

Comparison of the Efficiency of Systemic and Local Cell Therapy with Human Umbilical Cord Blood Mononuclear Cells in Rats with Severe Spinal Cord Injury.

Rat model of severe contusion spinal cord injury was used to study the effect of single intravenous and intraspinal injection of human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells on the restoration of motor function of the hind limbs. Recovery of the motor function of the hind limbs was assessed using load tests and open-field test according to BBB scale. Cell injection via both routes significantly improved (p≤0.05) the recovery of the motor function of the hind limbs by 35-40% relative to the level of "self-recovery"; the effects of intravenous andintraspinal administration did not differ significantly.