Small, circumscribed electrolytic lesions were made in the upper cervical corticospinal tract in adult rats. In the centre of the lesion, the axons and all other tissue elements were totally destroyed. Surrounding this region of destruction is an area of tissue which is only partially damaged. In this area TUNEL positive staining of contiguous rows of tract glial cells indicates massive oligodendrocytic apoptosis at 1-3 days after operation, but axons, astrocytes and blood vessels survive. From around 4 days, the corticospinal axons in this area are demyelinated, and the microglia contain ingested myelin, identified in electron micrographs as characteristic MBP immunoreactive laminar cytoplasmic bodies. After around 3 weeks, large numbers of Schwann cells, continuous with those on the pial surface of the spinal cord, accumulate along the lesion track and selectively infiltrate the perilesional reactive area, where they mingle intimately with the phagocytic microglia. Electron micrographs show that at this time basal lamina-enclosed Schwann cell processes establish non-myelinated ensheathment of axons. From around 4 weeks after operation, prominent Schwann cell myelination is indicated by P0 immunoreactivity, and peripheral type, one-to-one myelination in electron micrographs. Thus the effect of the selective loss of oligodendrocytes is to first activate microglia, and then to induce a replacement of myelin by Schwann cells.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Regeneration of adult axons in white matter tracts of the central nervous system.

It is widely accepted that the adult mammalian central nervous system (CNS) is unable to regenerate axons. In addition to physical or molecular barriers presented by glial scarring at the lesion site, it has been suggested that the normal myelinated CNS environment contains potent growth inhibitors or lacks growth-promoting molecules. Here we investigate whether adult CNS white matter can support long-distance regeneration of adult axons in the absence of glial scarring, by using a microtransplantation technique that minimizes scarring to inject minute volumes of dissociated adult rat dorsal root ganglia directly into adult rat CNS pathways. This atraumatic injection procedure allowed considerable numbers of regenerating adult axons immediate access to the host glial terrain, where we found that they rapidly extended for long distances in white matter, eventually invading grey matter. Abortive regeneration correlated precisely with increased levels of proteoglycans within the extracellular matrix at the transplant interface, whereas successfully regenerating transplants were associated with minimal upregulation of these molecules. Our results demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time, that reactive glial extracellular matrix at the lesion site is directly associated with failure of axon regrowth in vivo, and that adult myelinated white matter tracts beyond the glial scar can be highly permissive for regeneration.

Aging↗