Changes in the expression of versican of rat with hemisection of spinal cord injury

Objective To investigate the expression changes of Versican of CSPGs family in spinal cord in 3d, 7d and 14d following hemisection of spinal cord injury (hSCI) and to explore the relationships of Versican and spinal cord injury. Therefore, to offer the morphological datum for the research concerning the spinal cord repair. Methods 20 adult healthy Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into sham-operated control group and 3 d, 7 d, 14 d spinal cord injury groups. The spinal cords were hemisected between T9 and T10. The spinal cord was removed from the rostral and caudal segments of lesioned areas. Then the tissue blocks were made into 25μm frozen sections and the immunohistochemistry ABC method was performed on these sections. We respectively observe and count the number of Versican positive cells in ventral horn of spinal cord for all groups, and the average A value of immunoreactant were detected with computer image analysis technique. Results Versican positive products were mainly distributed in neurons and neuroglial cells in spinal cord ventral horn for the control group, and were also distributed in extracellular matrix for Versican. The Versican positive cells of rostral or caudal part of injury site for the three spinal cord injury groups were all decreased in number (P0.05). The average A values for all three spinal cord injury groups were increased (P0.05). Conclusion The increased-expression Versican may mutually play inhibitory effect on axon regeneration following SCI.