Article

Reliable outcome measures are essential for preclinical modeling of
spinal cord injury (SCI) in primates. MEASURES: need to be sensitive to both
increases and decreases in function in order to demonstrate potential positive or
negative effects of therapeutics. OBJECTIVES: To develop behavioral tests and
analyses to assess recovery of function after SCI in the nonhuman primate.
METHODS: In all, 24 male rhesus macaques were subjected to complete C7 lateral
hemisection. The authors scored recovery of function in an open field and during
hand tasks in a restraining chair. In addition, EMG analyses were performed in
the open field, during hand tasks, and while animals walked on a treadmill. Both
control and treated monkeys that received candidate therapeutics were included in
this report to determine whether the behavioral assays were capable of detecting
changes in function over a wide range of outcomes. RESULTS: The behavioral assays
are shown to be sensitive to detecting a wide range of motor functional outcomes
after cervical hemisection in the nonhuman primate. Population curves on recovery
of function were similar across the different tasks; in general, the population
recovers to about 50% of baseline performance on measures of forelimb function.
CONCLUSIONS: The behavioral outcome measures that the authors developed in this
preclinical nonhuman primate model of SCI can detect a broad range of motor
recovery. A set of behavioral assays is an essential component of a model that
will be used to test efficacies of translational candidate therapies for SCI.

Langue : ANGLAIS