Functional gait evaluation of collagen chitosan nerve guides for sciatic nerve repair

The objective of this work was to use a functional gait analysis technique to evaluate sciatic nerve repair through tissue-engineered nerve guides in a rodent animal model. The nerve guides were fabricated by blending collagen with chitosan material and evaluated over a 12-week period for motor and sensory nerve recovery assessed by gait analysis and behavioral testing. Gastrocnemius muscle weight measurements were obtained at the end of each experimental time point and correlated to motor nerve recovery. Functional gait analysis studied both the stance and swing phase angle formations during a normal gait cycle. During the stance phase, functional results revealed that blended nerve guides promoted increased motor nerve recovery than unblended chitosan nerve guides. Similar results were obtained from behavioral tests, indicating that blended nerve guides created increased sensitivity to applied stimulus compared to unblended nerve guides. Muscle strength also correlated with functional recovery and was significantly higher when compared to the unblended nerve guides. From this study, we conclude that collagen-blended chitosan nerve guides enhanced motor and sensory nerve recovery assayed through gait and behavioral testing compared to unblended nerve guides.