Aim: To analysis the role of T lymphocytes in spinal cord regeneration by comparing the recovery of movement and the morphological changes of injury area between BALB/c and DO11.10 transgenic mice.
Methods: Producing a crush injury model of spinal cord with special forceps. Analyze the changes of spinal cord injury area with H&E and GFAP, CD11b and lymphocytic immunohistochemical staining. Evaluate the recovery of movement function with Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan (BBB) locomotion testing system at 0, 7, 14 and 21 day post-injury (dpi).
Results: There were thicker and fastened glial scar at 21 dpi in the BALB/c mice but not in DO11.10 mice. The number of macrophages/microglia infiltrated in spinal cord injury area were more in DO11.10 than that in BALB/c mice at 14 dpi. The numbers of T lymphocytes infiltrated in spinal cord injury area were less in DO11.10 than that in BALB/c mice at 21 dpi. In addition, compare to BALB/c mice, the locomotion movement recovery of DO11.10 mice were much more significant within 3 weeks after spinal cord injury by BBB scoring system.
Conclusion: The infiltrated autoimmune activation T lymphocytes which specifically react to neural antigens are not beneficial to recovery of movement after spinal cord injury in mice.