Is the vertebral canal prepared to host the aged spinal cord?. A morphometric assessment.

NISHIDA F; BARBEITO ANDRÉS J; BARBEITO CG; PORTIANSKY EL

ZOOMORPHOLOGY (BERLIN. PRINT)

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2013

0720-213X

Although the interaction between the growing spinal cord and the vertebrae has been widely demonstrated for mammal?sprenatal and early postnatal life, there is notno extensive knowledge about this interaction during late postnatal stages. It has beenshown that spinal cord injuries are causally related to significant degenerative changes in bone properties. Nevertheless, informationabout a possible influence of the spinal cord on bone remodelling in adult healthy animals is missing. The aim of thisresearch work was to assess possible morphological changes of the cervical vertebral canal of juvenile and aged rats during theontogenetic period of adulthood that would justify the suggested influence. Since the spinal cord of rats increases its size withaging,ageing, we analyzedanalysed whether morphometric changes are occurring in the vertebral canal that would indicate boneremodelling in response to said growth. To this end, we used three complementary morphometric methods to describe the canal ofthe cervical and the first thoracic vertebrae. Geometric morphometric analyses evidence scarce variation in size and shape betweenjuvenile and aged rats suggesting that, in general terms, the canal morphology of cervical vertebrae is already prepared in earlyadulthood to host the growing spinal cord. C3 was the only vertebra that showed consistent variation for the variables of canalthickness, perimeter, height and area. This regional variation may be linked to the patterns described for the changing spinal cord