A nutrient combination designed to enhance synapse formation and function improves outcome in experimental spinal cord injury.

Spinal cord injury leads to major neurological impairment for which there is currently no effective treatment. Recent clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy of Fortasyn® Connect in Alzheimer's disease. Fortasyn® Connect is a specific multi-nutrient combination containing DHA, EPA, choline, uridine monophosphate, phospholipids, and various vitamins. We examined the effect of Fortasyn® Connect in a rat compression model of spinal cord injury. For 4 or 9 weeks following the injury, rats were fed either a control diet or a diet enriched with low, medium, or high doses of Fortasyn® Connect. The medium-dose Fortasyn® Connect-enriched diet showed significant efficacy in locomotor recovery after 9 weeks of supplementation, along with protection of spinal cord tissue (increased neuronal and oligodendrocyte survival, decreased microglial activation, and preserved axonal integrity). Rats fed the high-dose Fortasyn® Connect-enriched diet for 4 weeks showed a much greater enhancement of locomotor recovery, with a faster onset, than rats fed the medium dose. Bladder function recovered quicker in these rats than in rats fed the control diet. Their spinal cord tissues showed a smaller lesion, reduced neuronal and oligodendrocyte loss, decreased neuroinflammatory response, reduced astrocytosis and levels of inhibitory chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans, and better preservation of serotonergic axons than those of rats fed the control diet. These results suggest that this multi-nutrient preparation has a marked therapeutic potential in spinal cord injury, and raise the possibility that this original approach could be used to support spinal cord injured patients.

Implications of ketogenic diet on weight gain, motor activity and cicatrization in Wistar rats.

The ketogenic diet (KD) was initially developed for the treatment of pharmacoresistant epilepsy and a possible alternative for the obesity treatment, dyslipidemia, resistance to insulin, and nonalcoholic steatosis. However, few studies evaluate the diet effects in rats behavior or cicatrization. The objective of this work was to analyze the influence of the ketogenic diet on the weight gain, emotional behavior of the rats submitted to experimental models such as elevated plus maze (EPM) and open field (OF). The cicatrization time and leukocyte differentiations were also observed. Twenty male Wistar rats of two months age were divided into two groups. One was submitted to ketogenic diet (KD), and the control group (Co) was fed on commercial rations. After 7 days, the animals were weighed and submitted to EPM and OF. A small surgical incision was made and their blood was collected to a leukocyte count. It was verified that the rats from the KD presented less weight gain as compared with the rats from the Co (p < 0.05). The KD did not reveal differences on the behavior measures in the EPM model, but in the OF presented an ambulatory activity significantly bigger. The animals from the KD presented a cicatrization significantly better than Co after 72 h (p = 0.0035) and 96 h (p < 0.1). There was no difference between the groups for leukocyte count. Our results suggest that the KD can interfere on rats deambulation in animal models and improve the cicatrization response.