Sciatic Nerve Crush injury in the mouse

  • Presentation

    Animal model of nerve / axonal regeneration
    Sciatic nerve crush injury in the mouse is a widely used model for peripheral nerve regeneration. It serves to study underlying cellular and molecular events in nerve injury, and to evaluate therapeutic intervention that might boost axonal regeneration.
    In order to acquire full spectrum of recovery, NEUROFIT monitors both gait and nerve function together with their axon morphology correlates. This model has been tailored for compound testing.

  • Compound testing


    Compound testing addresses the effect of chronic treatment of mice (typically starting the same day as the nerve crush injury) on:

    ☐ recovery of nerve function
    ☐ axonal regeneration

  • Endpoints


    ☐ Electrodiagnostic

    ☐ CMAP

    ☐ Gait analysis

    ☐ Nerve morphometry

EMG / BEHAVIOURAL measure


    Electrodiagnostic testing.


    Schematic illustration of measure of :
    imbalance weight distribution in freely moving animal.



    Electromyography measure :
    Time course of loss and recovery in Compound Muscle Action Potential (CMAP) following sciatic nerve crush.


    Gait analysis (weight bearing) :
    Nerve lesion-induced asymmetric weight bearing followed by progressive normalization of weight distribution.


    EMG /
    Time course of change in the Compound Muscle Action Potential (CMAP) following sciatic nerve crush (3 weeks post-injury).

    Note the presence of polyphasia and temporal dispersion in the CMAP at Day 14 post-injury.




Nerve morphometry


    Nerve morphometry (axon profile distribution)
    4 weeks after the lesion, axons with diameter ≥ 2.5 µm are not fully regenerated yet in lesioned nerve.


    Nerve morphometry (g-ratio: myelin thickness)
    4 weeks after the lesion, axons with diameter ≥ 2.5 µm in lesioned nerve show thinner myelin sheath * than those in sham nerve specimen.
    ( *, greater the g-ratio, thinner the myelin sheath thickness is)

    In sham operated specimen, g-ratio (relative thickness of the myelin sheath) is relatively constant for axons of all size. Note the presence of large number of small and hypermyelinated axons following sciatic nerve crush (3 weeks post-injury).


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