Behavioral recovery and motor reinnervation outcomes after peripheral nerve transection with microsuture or nerve tape repair.

Authors

Emily A Hibbard, Dale R Sengelaub

Published in

Journal of neuroscience methods. Pages 110894. Sep 06, 2026. Epub Sep 06, 2026.

Abstract

Recovery after peripheral nerve injury (PNI), even with surgical intervention, is often poor. The current standard in surgical repair of PNIs, microsuture of the severed epineurium is technically demanding, time-consuming, and routinely results in fascicular misalignment.
Nerve Tape is a coaptation device that circumvents the need for microsuture. Nerve Tape repairs improve fascicular alignment, nerve conduction velocities, as well as muscle and axon morphologies compared to microsuture repairs. However, the efficacy of Nerve Tape for small diameter nerve repairs is understudied, and no reports exist directly comparing sexes. We compared sensory and locomotor recovery as well as the pattern of motor reinnervation after sciatic nerve transection and repair with either microsuture or Nerve Tape in rats of both sexes. Young adult male and female Lewis rats received a sciatic nerve transection repaired with either microsuture or Nerve Tape. Locomotor and sensory testing was performed weekly post-injury. At either 8- or 12-weeks post-repair, motoneurons whose axons had regenerated into the anterior tibialis muscle were retrogradely labeled, allowing for assessment of motoneuron number and spinal location.
Nerve Tape repairs took significantly less time than microsuture. Behavioral recovery outcomes were comparable after microsuture and Nerve Tape repairs and did not differ between sexes. Retrograde labeling of motoneurons demonstrated that motor axons successfully regenerated to appropriate and inappropriate muscles regardless of repair type or sex.
Our data supports the efficacy of Nerve Tape to repair small diameter nerve injuries in both males and females.

PMID:
42702309
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.