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Aim: Peripheral nerve injury regeneration studies using animal models are crucial to different pre-clinical therapeutic approaches efficacy evaluation whatever the surgical technique explored. Materials & methods: A 944 articles systematic review on 'peripheral nerve injury in animal models' over the last 9 years was carried out. Results: It was found that 91% used rodents, and only 9% employed large animals. Different nerves are studied, with generated gaps (10,78 mm) and methods applied for regeneration evaluation uniformed. Sciatic nerve was the most used (88%), followed by median and facial nerves (2.6%), significantly different. Conclusion: There has not been a significant scale-up of the in vivo testing to large animal models (anatomically/physiologically closer to humans), allowing an improvement in translational medicine for clinical cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Degenerative myelopathy (DM) is a neurodegenerative spinal cord disease with upper motor neurons, with progressive and chronic clinical signs, similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). DM has a complex etiology mainly associated with SOD1 gene mutation and its toxic role, with no specific treatment. Daily intensive rehabilitation showed survival time near 8 months but most animals are euthanized 6-12 months after clinical signs onset., Methods: This prospective controlled blinded cohort clinical study aims to evaluate the neural regeneration response ability of DM dogs subjected to an intensive neurorehabilitation protocol with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) transplantation. In total, 13 non-ambulatory (OFS 6 or 8) dogs with homozygous genotype DM/DM and diagnosed by exclusion were included. All were allocated to the intensive neurorehabilitation with MSCs protocol (INSCP) group ( n = 8) or to the ambulatory rehabilitation protocol (ARP) group ( n = 5), which differ in regard to training intensity, modalities frequency, and MSCs transplantation. The INSCP group was hospitalized for 1 month (T0 to T1), followed by MSCs transplantation (T1) and a second month (T2), whereas the ARP group was under ambulatory treatment for the same 2 months., Results: Survival mean time of total population was 375 days, with 438 days for the INSCP group and 274 for the ARP group, with a marked difference on the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. When comparing the literature's results, there was also a clear difference in the one-sample t -test ( p = 0.013) with an increase in time of approximately 70%. OFS classifications between groups at each time point were significantly different ( p = 0.008) by the one-way ANOVA and the independent sample t -test., Discussion: This INSCP showed to be safe, feasible, and a possibility for a long progression of DM dogs with quality of life and functional improvement. This study should be continued., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Gouveia, Correia, Cardoso, Carvalho, Oliveira, Almeida, Gamboa, Ribeiro, Branquinho, Sousa, Lopes, Sousa, Moreira, Coelho, Rêma, Alvites, Ferreira, Maurício and Martins.)