Treadmill training in incomplete spinal cord injured rats

Treadmill training has been shown to accelerate locomotor recovery and to i mprove weight bearing during treadmill walking in spinal cats. In human pat ients treadmill training is increasingly used in rehabilitation after incom plete spinal cord injury. In this study we examined training effects in spi nal cord injured rats with an incomplete dorsal lesion. Recovery was examin ed with an open field locomotor score, kinematic analysis on the treadmill, and several functional tests (i.e. foot print evaluation, narrow beam cros sing, grid walking, open field exploratory activity). During the course of 5 weeks after the injury, a substantial amount of recovery occurred in the treadmill trained as well as in the untrained rats. If compared to the cont rol lesioned rats, which showed a high level of spontaneous hindlimb moveme nts at 7-14 days post lesion, no additional beneficial effect of a 5-week d aily treadmill training on the locomotor outcome could be detected in the t rained group. The only change observed was a slightly larger exploratory ac tivity of the trained rats. It is probable that the spared ventral and vent ro-lateral fibers allowed spontaneous recovery and 'self-training' to occur to such an extend that systematic treadmill training did not provide addit ional improvement. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.