Next Generation Sequencing facilitates quantitative analysis of spinal cord tissue to explore the mechanisms of hyperbaric oxygen treatment alleviating the spinal cord inury

Aims: To better understand the potential mechanisms of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatment alleviating spinal cord injury (SCI). Materials and methods: The SCI model was firstly built in mice, which were randomly divided into three groups: Sham (SH), SCI and HBO groups, followed by hind limb motor function evaluation. Then the spinal cord tissue samples were harvested for histological evaluation and genome-wide transcriptional analysis at 1 week after injury. Finally, some oxidative stress and cell death related differently expressed genes were selected to be analyzed followed by the functional analysis. Results: HBO treatment significantly improved the recovery of hind limb motor function and decreased the histology score compared to the SCI group. In the genome-wide transcriptional analysis, a total of 76 common differently expressed gene among the three groups were obtained at 1 week after injury, which were enriched in functional pathway such as ferroptosis, calcium signaling pathway, serotonergic synapse, etc. Trends in expression of the six genes were consistent with transcriptional analysis. Conclusions: Identified differentially expressed genes and related signaling pathways may be associated with HBO treatment alleviating second spinal cord injury. These results contribute to elucidate the mechanism of HBO in the treatment of SCI. Spinal cord mRNA profiles of sham, spinal cord injury and HBO treatment groups on the 7th day after SCI