Sericin silk protein in peripheral nervous repair associated with the physical exercise of swimming in Wistar rats.

OBJECTIVE: To verify the action of sericin associated to swim exercise with overload, on sciatic nerve repair in Wistar rats, after 22 days of nerve compression.

METHODS: Forty animals been composed of five groups: control, injury, injury-sericin, injury-swimming and injury-sericin-swimming. During the lesion procedure, sericin, in hydrolyzed form, applied directly to the injury in the injury-sericin and injury-sericin-swimming groups. Injury-swimming and injury-sericin-swimming groups underwent to 5 days per week for 3 weeks, with a 10% overload of the animal's body weight, and a weekly progressive evolution of swimming time, lasting 15, 20 and 25 min/day. Pre and throughout the treatment period the animals performed evaluation of sciatic functional index and pressure pain threshold with digital von Frey filament. Euthanasia was performed on the 22nd postoperative day, and two fragments of the nerve were collected and prepared for descriptive and quantitative analysis.

RESULTS: The sciatic functional index assessment showed significant differences in the motor function of the control until the 14th day. Regarding the allodynia, there was revealed a significant improvement in injury-swimming performance relative to injury, injury-sericin and injury-sericin-swimming, and the number of viable and non-viable nerve fibers smaller than 4 μm in diameter was significantly higher in the injury-sericin-swimming.

CONCLUSION: swimming showed a better evolution of the nociceptive threshold and allodynia. Sericin treatment had exacerbated pro-inflammatory characteristics. On the other hand, the association of sericine and swimming showed a possible regulatory effect by resting swimming exercise, with a significant increase of fibers of smaller diameter.