protective effect of catechin hydrate on spinal cord ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats

Background: aortic artery stenosis leads to ischemia-reperfusion (i-r) injury, which can cause certain clinical expressions, such as paraplegia. objectives: to appraise the effect of catechin hydrate (ch) against spinal cord i-r injury. materials & methods: a total of 35 male rats (250-300 g) were divided randomly into five groups: intact, sham surgery, dimethyl sulfoxide (i-r+dmso), low-dose ch (i-r+10 mg/ kg ch), and high-dose ch (i-r+20 mg/kg ch). abdominal aorta clamping was done for 60 min. seventy-two hours after i-r, animals were evaluated for neurologic function, biochemical analysis, and histology. the data analysis was conducted by spss v. 16 using anova and kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney u tests. results: the mean motor deficit index (mdi) score and white matter damage in the ch (20 mg/kg) group were lower than in the dmso group (p=0.032). the mean plasma levels of malondialdehyde (mda) and superoxide dismutase (sod) in the ch groups were lower than that of the dmso group (p<0.05). the plasma level of total antioxidant capacity (tac) in the ch (20 mg/kg) group was higher than in the dmso group (p=0.032). in addition, the plasma level of catalase in the ch (20 mg/kg) group was higher than in the dmso and ch (10 mg/kg) groups (p<0.001). the average number of normal motor neurons in the experimental groups was lower than in the sham surgery group (p<0.001). conclusion: these results showed that ch may be effective in reducing spinal cord i-r injury.