LOSS OF NEURONS IN THE DORSAL-ROOT GANGLIA AFTER TRANSECTION OF A PERIPHERAL SENSORY NERVE - AN ANATOMICAL STUDY IN MONKEYS

Injury to a sensory nerve often results in a poor long term outcome, p artly because of sensory motor mismatch of regenerating axons at the t ransection site. We studied nine macaque monkeys and found that 27% of nerve cells in the projecting dorsal root ganglia had been lost 21 mo nths after transection and suturing of the radial sensory nerve. No sp ecific cell sizes were lost and the reduction was evenly distributed i n the affected ganglia in which neurons had been labelled with a mixtu re of wheat germ agglutinin-horseradish peroxidase conjugate (WGA-HRP) and HRP alone.