Differences between adult and neonatal rats in their astroglial response to spinal injury

Transection of the thoracic spinal cord in adult rats produces an astroglial reaction at the lesion site which spreads gradually to lumbar segments. We compared the spread of gliosis in cordotomized adult and neonatal rats in order to evaluate whether or not maturity of long spinal tracts is a precondition for the genesis of this histopathological reaction. By this experiment, we sought to determine whether spread of gliosis is induced by degeneration of nerve fibers in ascending and descending pathways or results from some more general reaction to injury. The spinal cords of 40 neonatal and 30 young adult rats were transected at T5, and 4 to 60 days later the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar segments were examined immunocytochemically for glial fibrillary acidic protein. In the neonatal rats, there was a moderate gliosis at the lesion site by 7 days; this reaction intensified somewhat during the next 60 days but always remained confined to the site of injury. In contrast, the lesion site of adult rats showed a much more intense gliosis; in those animals the response was maximal by 14 days and was characterized by a gradient of decreasing glial reactivity both rostrally and caudally from the transection site. These results support the hypothesis that the spread of gliosis from spinal lesions results from degeneration of the long ascending and descending fiber tracts.