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Published on: October 20, 2019
Melatonin lowers edema after spinal cord injury
Cheng Li1, Xiao Chen1, Suchi Qiao1
1Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Changhai Hospital, the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
Melatonin has been shown to diminish edema in rats. Melatonin can be used to treat spinal cord injury. This study presumed that melatonin could relieve spinal cord edema and examined how it might act. Our experiments found that melatonin (100 mg/kg, i.p.) could reduce the water content of the spinal cord, and suppress the expression of aquaporin-4 and glial fibrillary acidic protein after spinal cord injury. This suggests that the mechanism by which melatonin alleviates the damage to the spinal cord by edema might be related to the expression of aquaporin-4 and glial fibrillary acidic protein.
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