The effect of acetyl L-carnitine on gliosis reaction after spinal cord injury using a compression model in adult rats

Contusion injury causes a major variety of functional and sensory disorders. In this research, we tried to study histological changes after performing contusion model in spinal cord. For this reason, we investigated the effect of acetyl L-carnitine on gliosis reaction by using immunohistochemistry method for GFAP and CNPase after spinal cord injury(SCI).

In this study, 24 male adult Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 4 groups. Laminectomy at T9-T11 was done in all of the rats and based on control groups or study groups, normal saline or acetyl L-carnitine (300 mg/kg) was injected. In study groups, SCI was done by 30 gr compression. After 4 weeks, spinal cords were extracted for morphometry and immunohistochemistry study and data were analyzed using t test and ANOVA at p<0.05.

Motoneurons reduced after SCI and acetyl L-carnitine reduced this reduction in addition to reduction of astrocytes (p<0.05).

For the first time it was shown that in gliosis reaction, acetyl L-carnitine could reduce astrocytes and increase oligodendrocytes (about 3 times) and this improvement may be due to myelin production and also due to better conduction. Further study is needed to distinguish synapse conduction.