Description
- Abstract:
- Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating disease that afflicts hundreds of thousands of people each year. Recently, spinal cord epidural electrical stimulation (EES) has become a promising approach to modulate neural circuitry that is disrupted following SCI and achieve modest functional recovery. Many participants of studies using EES concurrently take pharmacological agents to treat their SCI symptoms, and it is likely that both EES and pharmacological agents will be essential to the recovery process. This study establishes a method to explore the effects of a commonly used SCI therapeutic drug, baclofen, in combination with and without EES on the evoked activity of the spinal cord in sheep. Baclofen, a GABAB receptor agonist, is a commonly prescribed agent used to treat conditions of SCI, including pain, muscle spasticity, and stiffness. In the spinal cord, baclofen primarily acts on pre-synaptic terminals to hyperpolarize the cell, which in turn reduces excitability and leads to a reduction of spasticity. To study the effects of baclofen on the spinal cord, we implanted two 60-contact HD64 (Micro-Leads Inc) electrodes arrays epidurally at L3/L4-L6 spinal segments in sheep (n=2). Implantation of vascular access port enabled for frequent drug infusion and blood collection for pharmacokinetic (PK) analysis. Blood samples were collected beginning at infusion and then at 0.5, 1, 4, 8, 24, 48, and 72 hours to obtain optimal drug concentration, and identify when the drug was no longer present within the blood. Recordings of electrically evoked compound action potentials (ECAPs) were performed pre- and post- drug infusion using the Macro+Stim data acquisition system (Ripple Neuro) during awake at-rest sessions. Our results provide insight into the effects of baclofen, in this case, in combination with EES had no significant changes on spinal ECAPs.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Sc. M.)--Brown University, 2023
Citation
Del Valle, Lily Marie,
"Exploring the Effects of Baclofen on Electrically Evoked Compound Action Potentials in the Ovine Spinal Cord"
(2023).
Biomedical Engineering Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:a9v87t2w/
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Biomedical Engineering Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Biomedical Engineering department....