Assessment of hindlimb motor recovery after severe thoracic spinal cord injury in rats: classification of CatWalk XT® gait analysis parameters

Assessment of locomotion recovery in preclinical studies of experimental spinal cord injury remains challenging. We studied the CatWalk XT® gait analysis for evaluating hindlimb functional recovery in a widely used and clinically relevant thoracic contusion/compression spinal cord injury model in rats. Rats were randomly assigned to either a T9 spinal cord injury or sham laminectomy. Locomotion recovery was assessed using the Basso, Beattie, and Bresnahan open field rating scale and the CatWalk XT® gait analysis. To determine the potential bias from weight changes, corrected hindlimb (H) values (divided by the unaffected forelimb (F) values) were calculated. Six weeks after injury, cyst formation, astrogliosis, and the deposition of chondroitin sulfate glycosaminoglycans were assessed by immunohistochemistry staining. Compared with the baseline, a significant spontaneous recovery could be observed in the CatWalk XT® parameters max intensity, mean intensity, max intensity at%, and max contact mean intensity from 4 weeks after injury onwards. Of note, corrected values (H/F) of CatWalk XT® parameters showed a significantly less vulnerability to the weight changes than absolute values, specifically in static parameters. The corrected CatWalk XT® parameters were positively correlated with the Basso, Beattie, and Bresnahan rating scale scores, cyst formation, the immunointensity of astrogliosis and chondroitin sulfate glycosaminoglycan deposition. The CatWalk XT® gait analysis and especially its static parameters, therefore, seem to be highly useful in assessing spontaneous recovery of hindlimb function after severe thoracic spinal cord injury. Because many CatWalk XT® parameters of the hindlimbs seem to be affected by body weight changes, using their corrected values might be a valuable option to improve this dependency.