Woods M, Whiteside G, Pearson M, Pomonis J, Turchin P, Walker K (2003) Ablation of a population of NK-1 expressing neurons in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord does not induce αβ sprouting into lamina II. Neuroscience 2003 Abstracts 64.11. Society for Neuroscience, New Orleans, LA.
Summary: Peripheral nerve injury results in hyperalgesia and allodynia. It has been proposed that sprouting of myelinated touch responsive Aβ-fibers into the innervation territory of pain sensitive C fibers in the spinal cord contributes to these abnormal behaviors. In has further been postulated that excitatory cell death of spinal cord neurons may result in “vacant synapses” that induce sprouting (Woolf et al., 1992). We have investigated whether selectively ablating a population of cells in laminae I and II, using intrathecal (i.t.) SP-saporin (SP-SAP), will induce sprouting from deeper laminae. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were either injected i.t. at the lumbar region with SP-SAP (1 μl, 5 μM) or the sciatic nerve was axotomised at the mid-thigh level. Two weeks later the sciatic nerve was injected with the retrograde tracer, cholera toxin-β subunit (CTB) (2 μl, 2%) which selectively traces Aβ-fibers. Three days post CTB the animals were perfused, the lumbar ganglia and spinal cord harvested, sectioned and stained immunohistochemically for NK-1 and CTB. As previously described axotomy resulted in considerable CTB immunostaining in laminae I, II and III compared to non-axotomised controls in which it was present only in I and III. SP-SAP i.t. resulted in a substantial reduction of NK-1 like immunostaining in the spinal cord compared to saline injected controls. CTB was not detected in lamina II of spinal cords from animals with an ablation of NK-1 expressing cells. These results suggest that the death of dorsal horn neurons does not induce sprouting of Aβ-fibers into lamina II.
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