Novel targets in injured cord in an obese SCI rat model

In the present study, we sought to understand the impact of obesity/metabolic disease (high-fat induced) on spinal cord injury (SCI) by examining transcriptome. Adult, male Long Evans rats received either thoracic level contusion of the spinal cord or sham laminectomy and then were allowed to recover on normal rat chow for 4 weeks and further on HFD for an additional 8 weeks. Spinal cord tissues harvested from the rats were processed for Affymetrix microarray and further transcriptomic analysis.