Objective: Skeletal muscle injury has become an important condition to treat. With traumas increasing and poor health outcome it has become important to find a suitable treatment to enhance the regeneration of this tissue. Many treatment options are available but there is still no best technique to treat the skeletal muscles in a rapid and effective way. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) need to be demonstrated to be able to do this in a very well way.
Aim: To evaluate the therapeutic potential of BM-MSCs in treatment of gastrocnemius muscle injury after 14 days.
Material and Methods: Fifteen female rats were randomly divided into three groups:
1.
Group I (Control Group)
2.
Group II (Gastrocnemius muscle injury without BM-MSCs local injection)
3.
Group III (Gastrocnemius muscle injury with BM-MSCs local injection)
The muscle specimens were processed for the light microscope, transmission electron microscope examination, and real time-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RQ-PCR) assay for Y-chromosome, and CM-Dil.
Results: Group II showed destruction of the muscle fibres and replacement with fibrous tissue. There was depletion of the cytoplasmic content. Group III showed regeneration of the muscle fibres with minimal amount of fibrous tissue. The nuclei of the muscle fibres regained their normal architecture and bridging between the muscle fibres remained. The BM-MSCs become part of the muscle fibres as proved by CM-Dil.
Conclusion: The results confirmed that BM-MSCs are a great option for the use in skeletal muscle regeneration. They were capable of both accelerating the healing process and allowing the skeletal muscle to repair with health new muscular tissue.