RESEARCH ARTICLE
Fibroblast Transplantation Results to the Degenerated Rabbit Lumbar Intervertebral Discs
Ibrahim Halil Ural1, Kerem Alptekin2, *, Aysegul Ketenci3, Seyhun Solakoglu4, Hasan Alpak5, Süleyman Özyalçın6
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 11
First Page: 404
Last Page: 416
Publisher ID: TOORTHJ-11-404
DOI: 10.2174/1874325001711010404
Article History:
Received Date: 23/02/2017Revision Received Date: 09/03/2017
Acceptance Date: 22/03/2017
Electronic publication date: 17/05/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Our study is an analysis of the histological and radiological changes in degenerated lumbar intervertebral discs, after transplantation of fibroblasts in rabbits. With that study we aimed to show the viability of the fibroblasts injected to the degenerated discs, and observe their potential for further studies.
Method:
The apoptosis of the cell is one of the factors at the disc degeneration process. Fibroblasts may act as mesenchymal stem cells at the tissue to which they are injected and they may replace the apoptotic cells. The nucleus pulposus of the discs from eight rabbits were aspirated under scopic guidance to induce disc degeneration.
Results:
One month later, cultured fibroblasts, which had been taken from the skin, were injected into the disc. The viability and the potential of the injected cells for reproduction were studied histologically and radiologically. Cellular formations and organizations indicating to the histological recovery were observed at the discs to which fibroblasts were transplanted. The histological findings of the discs to which no fibroblasts were transplanted, did not show any histological recovery. Radiologically, no finding of the improvement was found in both groups. The fibroblasts injected to the degenerated discs are viable.
Conclusion:
The findings of improvement, observed in this study, suggest that fibroblast transplantation could be an effective method of therapy for the prevention or for the retardation of the degenerative disease of the discs.
