tBackground: Peripheral nerve injuries represent a clinical problem with insufficient or unsatisfactorytreatment options. Functional outcome with nerve guidance conduits was unsatisfactory in nerve defectswith increased gap size. So, cell therapy may benefit as a tool for optimizing the regeneration process. Theaim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of combination of cell therapy and nerve guidanceconduits on the nerve regeneration and on the expression of the factors aiding the regeneration in a ratmodel of sciatic nerve injury.Methods and results: Sixty Wistar rats were randomly divided into four groups: Group I: normal controlgroup; Group II: sciatic nerve injury (SNI) with a 10 mm long sciatic nerve gap; Group III: SNI withusing a nerve conduit (NC) for nerve gap bridging; and Group IV: SNI with using a NC associated withWharton’s jelly derived mesenchymal stem cells (WJ-MSCs). The results showed that the combinationtherapy NC + WJ-MSCs caused much better beneficial effects than NC alone evidenced by increasing sciaticnerve index and pin-prick score. The histopathological analysis found that the use of the NC combinedwith WJ-MSCs resulted in a structure of the sciatic nerve comparable to the normal one with betternerve regeneration when compared with NC only. There was no differentiation of WJ-MSCs into nervestructure. Lastly, there was an upregulation of expression for netrin-1, ninjurin, BDNF, GDNF, VEGF andangiopoitin-1 rat genes in NC + WJ-MSCs group than NC alone.Conclusion: The addition of WJ-MSCs to the nerve guidance conduits seems to bring significant advantagefor nerve regeneration, basically by increasing the expression of neurotrophic and angiogenic factorsestablishing more favorable environment for nerve regeneration. |
