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Muscle Fiber Regeneration in Long-Term Denervated Muscles: Basics and Clinical Perspectives

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Regenerative Medicine and Plastic Surgery

Abstract

The differentiation of muscle fibers regenerating in the absence of the nerve is remarkable in animal experiments and is also evident in muscle biopsies harvested from human patients. During the last 20 years, clinical studies have employed long impulse biphasic electrical stimulation as a first-step treatment for humans living with long-term denervated muscles subsequent to spinal cord injury (SCI). Trophic and functional recovery from severe atrophy/degeneration occurs in long-term denervated degenerating muscles (DDM) treated with h-bFES at between 1 and 5 years from SCI. This fact has sound foundations based on muscle biopsy analyses and on quantitative muscle color computed tomography (QMC-CT). If myogenesis in patients could be modulated during the many months needed to recover tetanic contractility of denervated muscles, then it should be possible to substantially abbreviate the time needed to achieve functional recovery of long-term denervated human muscle by h-bFES, using the commercial muscle stimulator and the large electrodes now available. The future will tell if induced muscle fiber regeneration and h-bFES will be useful even at 10 years after SCI, i.e., in the vast majority of the people in need of them.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Italian Ministero per l’Università e la RicercaScientifica eTecnologica (M.U.R.S.T.), the EU Commission Shared Cost Project RISE (Contract no. QLG5-CT-2001-02191), the Austrian Ministry of Science, and the Ludwig Boltzmann Society (Vienna). U. Carraro thanks the IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo, Venice (Italy), for scientific support and hospitality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo, Venezia-Lido, Italy

    Ugo Carraro & Francesco Piccione

  2. Department of Neurorehabilitation, Foundation San Camillo Hospital, I.R.C.C.S., Venice, Italy

    Ugo Carraro

  3. Physiko- und Rheumatherapie, St. Poelten, Austria

    Helmut Kern

  4. Interdepartmental Research Centre of Myology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Sandra Zampieri, Stefano Masiero & Franco Bassetto

  5. Clinical Engineering and Information Technology, Landspitali—University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Paolo Gargiulo

  6. Anatomy Department, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Carbondale, IL, USA

    Amber Pond

  7. Unit of Plastic Surgery, Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Vincenzo Vindigni

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  1. Ugo Carraro
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  1. Department for Plastic Surgery and Hand Surgery, Division of Experimental Plastic Surgery, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Dominik Duscher

  2. Private Practice, Tustin, CA, USA

    Melvin A. Shiffman

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Carraro, U. et al. (2019). Muscle Fiber Regeneration in Long-Term Denervated Muscles: Basics and Clinical Perspectives. In: Duscher, D., Shiffman, M.A. (eds) Regenerative Medicine and Plastic Surgery. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19962-3_21

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