Effect of injury severity on lower urinary tract function after experimental spinal cord injury

Lower urinary tract dysfunction is a serious burden for patients following spinal cord injury. Patients are usually limited to treatment with urinary drainage catheters, which can lead to repeated urinary tract infections and lower quality of life. Most of the information previously obtained regarding lower urinary tract function after spinal cord injury has been in completely transected animals. After thoracic transection in the rat, plasticity of local lumbosacral spinal circuitry establishes a "reflex bladder," which results in partial recovery of micturition, albeit with reduced voiding efficiency. Since at least half of cord-injured patients exhibit neurologically incomplete injury, rat models of clinically relevant incomplete contusion injury have been developed. With respect to lower urinary tract function, recent anatomical and physiological studies have been performed after incomplete thoracic contusion injury. The results show greater recovery of lower urinary tract function that varies inversely with the severity of the initial trauma and is positively correlated with time after injury. Recovery, as measured by coordination of the bladder with the external urethral sphincter, occurs between 1 and 4 weeks after spinal cord injury. It is associated with normalization of: serotonin immunoreactivity and glutamate receptor subunit mRNA expression in the dorsolateral nucleus that innervates the external urethral sphincter muscle, the response to glutamatergic pharmacological probes administered at the lumbosacral spinal cord level, and c-Fos activation patterns in the lumbar spinal cord. Understanding the mechanisms involved in this recovery will provide a basis for enhancing lower urinary tract function in patients after incomplete spinal cord injury.