Publications by authors named "Lindsay Cates"
Article Synopsis
- Traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) leads to quick loss of neurological function, making recovery prediction challenging.
- The study used contrast-enhanced ultrasound to assess intraspinal blood flow disruption in a rodent model, finding that this disruption was linked to injury severity and locomotor function after 8 weeks.
- In 27 human cases with varying tSCI severity, results confirmed correlations between ultrasound metrics and both injury severity and functional recovery after 6 months, suggesting potential for these ultrasound metrics in prognostic assessments, although further studies are needed.
Objective: Acute traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) is followed by a prolonged period of secondary neuroglial cell death. Neuroprotective interventions, such as surgical spinal cord decompression, aim to mitigate secondary injury. In this study, the authors explore whether the effect size of posttraumatic neuroprotective spinal cord decompression varies with injury severity.
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- * In a study with rats, injecting botulinum toxin A (BoNT-A) into the bladder after SCI resulted in lighter bladders and thinner walls compared to those that received saline, indicating a reduction in tissue damage.
- * Early treatment with BoNT-A helps maintain bladder tissue integrity by reducing abnormal changes like fibrosis and hypertrophy that occur after SCI.
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is clinically used to image the microcirculation at lower imaging frequencies (<2 MHz). Recently, plane-wave acquisitions and Doppler processing have revealed improved microbubble sensitivity, enabling CEUS use at higher frequencies (15 MHz) and the ability to image simultaneously blood flow in the micro- and macrocirculations. We used this approach to assess acute and chronic blood flow changes within contused spinal cord in a rodent spinal cord injury model.
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- This study compares two surgical techniques, durotomy and durotomy plus myelotomy, aimed at reducing elevated intraspinal pressure (ISP) after traumatic spinal cord injury in a rodent model.
- Both surgical options effectively decreased ISP and showed significant benefits for preserving spinal tissue and motor neurons, with myelotomy enhancing tissue sparing by 13.7% compared to durotomy alone.
- Additionally, while both surgeries improved spinal function, only durotomy alone helped recover bladder control, highlighting the need for targeted treatment strategies in future spinal injury cases.
Introduction: Severe trauma to the spinal cord leads to a near complete loss of blood flow at the injury site along with significant hypoperfusion of adjacent tissues. Characterization and monitoring of local tissue hypoperfusion is currently not possible in clinical practice because available imaging techniques do not allow for assessment of blood flow with sufficient spatial and temporal resolutions. The objective of the current study was to determine whether ultrafast contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging could be used to visualize and quantify acute hemodynamic changes in a rat traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) model.
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- This study investigates the use of transcutaneous ultrasound to measure blood flow in the contused spinal cord of a rodent model after spinal cord injury (SCI).
- The research involved 12 Long-Evans rats, which were imaged at two time points (3 days and 10 weeks) post-injury to assess lesion size and blood perfusion.
- Results showed that transcutaneous ultrasound is effective for tracking hemodynamic changes over time, with significant decreases in the area of hypoperfusion from initial measurements at 3 days to follow-up at 10 weeks.
OBJECTIVE Traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) causes an almost complete loss of blood flow at the site of injury (primary injury) as well as significant hypoperfusion in the penumbra of the injury. Hypoperfusion in the penumbra progresses after injury to the spinal cord and is likely to be a major contributor to progressive cell death of spinal cord tissue that was initially viable (secondary injury). Neuroprotective treatment strategies seek to limit secondary injury.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) often leads to permanent neurological impairment. Currently, the only clinically effective intervention for patients with acute SCI is surgical decompression by removal of impinging bone fragments within 24 h after injury. Recent clinical studies suggest that elevated intraparenchymal spinal pressure (ISP) limits functional recovery following SCI.
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- Major depression is a prevalent psychiatric disorder with significant challenges in treatment, including non-response and side effects from existing medications.
- Recent research highlights the serotonin 5-HT₇ receptor as a promising target for antidepressant therapies, with studies showing that its antagonists may lead to antidepressant-like effects in animal models.
- Lurasidone, a new atypical antipsychotic with high affinity for the 5-HT₇ receptor, has demonstrated potential for improving depression scores in clinical trials, encouraging further evaluation of its use as a depression treatment.