Biomedical Research

We investigated whether Malaysian Sea cucumber, Stichopus variegatus (SV) extracts promoted repair in acute contused spinal cord injury in a rat model. Adults female Sprague Dawley rats weighted at 200-250g were subjected into seven groups. Rats had 10g rod dropped from heights of 25mm onto exposed cord at T9/T10 using NYU impactor device. Locomotor recovery was measured using Basso Beatie Breshnan (BBB) Locomoting scale after two weeks of intrathecal intervention with different doses of SV crude extracts, methylprednisolone and control groups. The methylprednisolone and 10 μg/kg SV treated groups showed a significance difference of BBB scores compared to control group indicating the improvement of motor functions after 14 days of injury(p<0.05). The intramedullary hemorrhage was found affected gray matter than white matter after contusion injury(p<0.01). However, methylprednisolone and 10 μg/kg SV extracts reduces intramedullary hemorrage compare to control group (p<0.05). Correlation coefficient analysis demonstrated a significance negative correlation between BBB scores and gray matter hemorrhage(r2= -0.99) and white matter hemorrhage (r2= -0.93). These findings lead to a conclusion that severity of hemorrhage was associated with behavior deficits. We also found Methylprednisolone and 10 μg/kg SV extracts spared the white matter (74.2% and 67.7% respectively) after 14 days of injury compared to control group (33%). In this present study, the white matter sparing was directly proportional to behavior deficits (r2= 0.91).Therefore, 10 μg/kg of SV extracts in this study strengthens the hypothesis the S. variegatus body wall extract is showed the capacity of promoting repair by improving motor functions and reduces intramedullary hemorrhage of acute contused spinal cord injury in rats.

Author(s): Azim Patar, Hasnan Jaafar, Syed Mohsin Syed Sahil Jamalullail, Jafri Malin Abdullah
Abstract | Full-Text | PDF

Share this