ENHANCED NEUROPATHIC PAIN FOLLOWING INTRASPINALY INJECTION OF SCHWANN CELLS IN CONTUSION MODEL OF SPINAL CORD INJURY

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to sensorimotor deficits and neuropathic pain
(NP). Cell therapy is a common method for treatment of SCI. The mechanism which has been
explained for development of NP including: transplantation of stem cell leads to differentiation of
these cells to astrocytes, and these cells secretes NGF which leads to axonal sprouting in dorsal horn
neurons and this leads to NP. Since Schwann cells (SCs) are commonly used in cell therapy, we
sought to investigate whether intraspinaly injection of these cells develop NP.
Materials & Methods: 24 male Wistar rats were used. SCs were cultured, model of SCI was
performed and rats were divided into the three groups including: a control group, an experiment group
and a sham group. In control group only a laminectomy was performed, the experiment group received
SCs intraspinaly. The sham group received serum in the same way. Locomotion was assessed using
BBB test and NP was assessed by withdrawal threshold test.
Result: Significant improvement was observed in the BBB scores in experiment group (P<0.05)
compared to sham and control group and there was a significant difference in withdrawal threshold
means between sham and experiment groups (P< 0.05).
Conclusion: The present study shows that intraspinaly transplantation of SCs can improve locomotor
recovery and lead to NP, so it is required for development of methods for attenuation of NP in cell
therapy studies in future.