Publications by authors named "Akihito Sotome"
Article Synopsis
- Chronic compressive myelopathy (CCM) is a significant spinal cord issue in older adults, caused by pressure from bony or soft tissues, but no CT myelography method has been developed for rodents.
- A new technique was created using a small syringe to inject a contrast medium into the subarachnoid space of anesthetized mice, allowing CT imaging to visualize the spinal cord shape in both healthy and affected mice.
- This method is less invasive and quicker than traditional approaches, providing valuable images of the spinal cord, which can help in research on CCM and related spinal conditions in rodents.
Although rodents have been widely used for experimental models of spinal cord diseases, the details of the growth curves of their spinal canal and spinal cord, as well as the molecular mechanism of the growth of adult rat spinal cords remain unavailable. They are particularly important when conducting the experiments of cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM), since the disease condition depends on the size of the spinal canal and the spinal cord. Thus, the purposes of the present study were to obtain accurate growth curves for the spinal canal and spinal cord in rats; to define the appropriate age in weeks for their use as a CSM model; and to propose a molecular mechanism of the growth of the adult spinal cord in rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study focuses on the breakdown of the blood-brain spinal cord barrier (BBSCB) and its impact on central nervous system diseases, particularly spinal cord injury (SCI), highlighting the need for protective drugs.
- Researchers developed a high-throughput screening assay (HTSA) to identify potential drugs and screened 1,570 existing medications, identifying three candidates: berberine, mubritinib, and pioglitazone.
- The results showed that berberine and mubritinib effectively protected BBSCB function and reduced neuronal loss after SCI in mouse models, improving overall gait performance.