Biochemical Assessment of Ganoderma Lucidum’s Neuroprotective Effect in Rat Spinal Cord Trauma

Introduction:In spinal cord injury there are two identified tissue damage mechanisms named as primary and secondary injuries. It has been shown that the secondary injury increases the neurological damage occurred by primary injury and this can be prevented pharmacologically. Today, a protocol to prevent and treat the secondary injury can’t be established. Ganoderma lucidum is one of the fungus species that traditionally utilized for years because of its significant anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects, which have the potential to diminish the secondary injury due to oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. These clinically valuable effects of ganoderma lucidum were shown in various tissues before but, there isn’t enough data in spinal cord injury.

Material and Method :Tator and Rivlin’s clip compression method was used to achieve spinal cord injury in rats and evaluated the antioxidant effect of Ganoderma lucidum’s hot-water extract. A 5-day treatment, started 2 hours after the spinal cord injury applied in two groups of subjects in high doses (133mg/m2/day) and low doses (13.3mg/m2/day). 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and malondialdehyde (MDA) values were evaluated with control and vehicle groups..

Results :Ganoderma lucidum when given in dose of 60mg/day (133mg/m2/day) both tissue level changes of DPPH and MDA are detected statistically significant (p<0.5) but, in dose of 6mg/day (13.3mg/m2/day), although there is a reduction seen in MDA levels (p>0.5), only the tissue level changes of DPPH was statistically significant (p<0.5). These biochemical data showed that, if Ganoderma lucidum treatment is given in enough doses it has a healing effect in the secondary injury process induced by oxidative stress..

Conclusions :This is a preliminary study investigating the neuroprotective effects of Ganoderma lucidum in rat spinal cord injury model. Further histopathological and ultrastructural investigation should be made to support our positive biochemical findings so, a new alternative spinal cord injury treatment protocol with less side effects can be developed.