Affiliations: Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada | Service d'Orthopédie, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada | Department of Biomedical Sciences, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Eric Beaumont, PhD, Department of Biomedical Sciences, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN 37614, USA. Tel.: +1 423 439 2454; Fax: +1 423 439 8044; E-mails: [email protected]; [email protected] (L. Wang); [email protected] (D.M. Rouleau).
Abstract: Surgical repair alone does not lead to satisfactory recovery after nerve laceration injury, yet no adjuvant clinical treatments are available. The goal of this review is to systematically survey all adjuvant treatments after surgery investigated in rat and mouse models. Both PubMed and Embase were explored with a systematic bibliographic search algorithm. Inclusion criteria consisted of treatments applied to rats or mice after complete transection and microsurgical repair of lower-limb motor or mixed nerves. Effect size statistics enabled numerical comparison between outcomes of treated and untreated animals and ranked the best treatments. 1,553 articles were found according to our search strategies, and 22 of them corresponded to our pre-defined inclusion criteria. After data extraction and analysis, the top 3 adjuvant strategies in terms of combined average effect size were citicoline, neurotrophin-4, and nitric oxide synthesis inhibitor, with values of 5.52, 5.14 and 4.08, respectively. Definitive treatment comparison was difficult due to the lack of uniformity in outcome evaluation in the experiments performed. Animal studies, comparing treatments administered within the same experimental protocol, are needed to truly assess efficiency and to provide solid recommendations for future clinical investigation.
Keywords: Nerve repair, rat, mouse, adjuvant therapy, gait, muscle strength
