Functional and Structural Changes in the Corticospinal Tract of Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

Autor: Satoshi Shimo, Masako Ikutomo, Ken Muramatsu, Masatoshi Niwa, Toru Tamaki
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Volume 22
Issue 18
International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Vol 22, Iss 10123, p 10123 (2021)
ISSN: 1422-0067
DOI: 10.3390/ijms221810123
Popis: This study aimed to reveal functional and morphological changes in the corticospinal tract, a pathway shown to be susceptible to diabetes. Type 1 diabetes was induced in 13-week-old male Wistar rats administered streptozotocin. Twenty-three weeks after streptozotocin injection, diabetic animals and age-matched control animals were used to demonstrate the conduction velocity of the corticospinal tract. Other animals were used for morphometric analyses of the base of the dorsal funiculus of the corticospinal tract in the spinal cord using both optical and electron microscopy. The conduction velocity of the corticospinal tract decreased in the lumbar spinal cord in the diabetic animal, although it did not decrease in the cervical spinal cord. Furthermore, atrophy of the fibers of the base of the dorsal funiculus was observed along their entire length, with an increase in the g-ratio in the lumbar spinal cord in the diabetic animal. This study indicates that the corticospinal tract fibers projecting to the lumbar spinal cord experience a decrease in conduction velocity at the lumbar spinal cord of these axons in diabetic animals, likely caused by a combination of axonal atrophy and an increased g-ratio due to thinning of the myelin sheath.
Databáze: OpenAIRE