title: Establishment of a mechanical injury model of rat hippocampal neurons in vitro.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To establish a simple, reproducible, and practical mechanical injury model of hippocampal neurons of Sprague-Dawley rats in vitro.
  
  
  METHODS
  Hippocampal neurons isolated from 1-2-day old rats were cultured in vitro. Mild, moderate and severe mechanical injuries were delivered to the neurons by syringe needle tearing, respectively. The control neurons were treated identically with the exception of trauma. Cell damage was assessed by measuring the Propidium Iodide (PI) uptaking at different time points (0.5, 1, 6, 12 and 24 hours) after injury. The concentration of neuron specific enolase was also measured at some time points.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Pathological examination showed that degeneration, degradation and necrosis occurred in the injured cultured neurons. Compared with the control group, the ratio of PI-positive cells in the injured groups increased significantly after 30 minutes of injury (P<0.05). More severe the damage was, more PI-positive neurons were detected. Compared with the control group, the concentration of neuron specific enolase in the injured culture increased significantly after 1 hour of injury (P<0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The established model of hippocampal neuron injury in vitro can be repeated easily and can simulate the damage mechanism of traumatic brain injury, which can be used in the future research of traumatic brain injury.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Second Affiliated Hospital, Medical College of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310009, China. yangxf@zju.edu.cn
authors.forename: Xiao-feng
authors.initials: XF
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.forename: De-sheng
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.forename: Wei-guo
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Wei-wei
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Xiu-jue
authors.initials: XJ
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Xue-qun
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Shi-ting
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Lü
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000201:enzymology / Q000473:pathology*; D004867:Equipment Design; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000201:enzymology / Q000293:injuries*; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D009474:Neurons / Q000201:enzymology / Q000473:pathology*; D010751:Phosphopyruvate Hydratase / Q000096:biosynthesis; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D010751:Phosphopyruvate Hydratase