A Comparison of Surgical Invasions for Spinal Nerve Ligation with or without Paraspinal Muscle Removal in a Rat Neuropathic Pain Model.
L5 spinal nerve ligation (SNL) in rats is one of the most popular models for studying neuropathic pain because of its high reproducibility. During the surgery, a part of the L5 paraspinal muscle is usually removed, which produces extra trauma and may potentially affect the physiological processes involved in neuropathic pain. To reduce the surgical trauma, the paraspinal muscle retraction was developed for exposure of the spinal nerve. The current study was aimed at comparing the surgical invasions between the L5 SNL models with paraspinal muscle removal or retraction. The results showed that both methods induced similar neuropathic pain behavior. However, the paraspinal muscle retraction group exhibited an average of 2.7 mg less blood loss than the muscle removal group. This group also showed a significantly lower increase in serum myoglobin and creatine phosphokinase levels on postoperative days 1 and 2, as well as a lower increase in interleukin-1β and interleukin-6 levels on postoperative day 1. The paraspinal muscle maintained normal morphological features following paraspinal muscle retraction. Our results indicate that the SNL rat model with paraspinal muscle retraction is a reliable physiological model that is reproducible, readily available, and less invasive than the model with muscle removal.
Department of Orthopedics, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 600 Yi Shan Road, Shanghai 200233, China.
Yi-Gang
YG
Huang
Department of Pharmacology, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, 555 Zu Chong Zhi Road, Shanghai 201203, China.
Qing
Q
Zhang
Department of Orthopedics, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 600 Yi Shan Road, Shanghai 200233, China.
Hao
H
Wu
Department of Orthopedics, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 600 Yi Shan Road, Shanghai 200233, China.
Chang-Qing
0000-0001-7571-4858
CQ
Zhang
D000818:Animals; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006801:Humans; D008026:Ligation; D009437:Neuralgia / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D064170:Paraspinal Muscles / Q000294:innervation / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*; D051381:Rats; D013127:Spinal Nerves / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*