Neuronal regeneration in denervated muscle following sensory and muscular neurotization

Figures & data

Figure 1. Intraoperative photograph of the right leg of a rat from group III showing the sural nerve (black arrow) split into 4 fascicles (white arrows) and embedded into 4 arbitrarily divided quadrants of the lateral head of the gastrocnemius muscle (GM).

Figure 2. Fluorescence photomicrographs of sections from gastrocnemius muscles immunohistochemically stained for neuronal markers and labeled with fluorochrome Cy3. CGRP-positive nerve fibers in control (A) and experimental (B) sides in group I; PGP 9.5-positive nerve fibers in experimental side in group II (C), and SP-positive nerve fibers in experimental side in group III (D). Arrows indicate nerve fibers. Bar represents 50 μn.

Semiquantitative image analysis of digital microscopic images. Numbers indicate median number of positively stained nerve fibers per high-power (20×) field (95% confidence interval)

		Control	Experimental	Difference (%)	P-value^a
Group 1	PGP 9.5	3.6 (3.1–4.2)	4.3 (3.4–5.3)	17	0.05
Denervation	CGRP	1.8 (1.1–2.5)	2.5 (1.7–4.0)	43	0.05
	SP	1.1 (0.3–1.6)	1.5 (0.6–1.7)	33	0.4
Group 2	PGP 9.5	4.3 (3.5–5.7)	6.6 (5.6–9.2)	56	<0.01
Direct sensory to motor	CGRP	2.0 (1.4–2.9)	5.3 (4.7–6.5)	163	<0.01
neurotization	SP	1.4 (0.7–1.8)	3.1 (1.9–4.3)	127	0.05
Group 3	PGP 9.5	4.4 (3.7–5.0)	7.5 (5.7–10.4)^b	71	<0.01
Direct sensory nerve to	CGRP	2.1 (1.9–3.1)	8.2 (6.0–10.2)^b	298	<0.01
muscle neurotization	SP	1.4 (0.7–1.8)	4.9 (3.3–7.2)^b	254	<0.01

^aProbability (p-value) according to Wilcoxon signed rank test for significance of difference between experimental and control sides.

^bp ≤ 0.01 by Mann-Whitney U test, on comparison with group 2.