ReviewNeural regeneration research2018
Conundrums and confusions regarding how polyethylene glycol-fusion produces excellent behavioral recovery after peripheral nerve injuries.
Review in Neural regeneration research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Polyethylene Glycol: The Future of Posttraumatic Nerve Repair? Systemic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2019Pooled it
- Initial researches on neuro-functional status and evolution in chronic ethanol consumers with recent traumatic spinal cord injury.Journal of medicine and lifePooled it
- Successful polyethylene glycol fusion repair using stored viable peripheral nerve allografts in Sprague-Dawley and Lewis rats.Neural regeneration research · 2026Article
- Article
- Tissue damage-induced axon injury-associated responses in sensory neurons: requirements, prevention, and potential role in persistent post-surgical pain.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Review
- Application of"Spinal cord fusion" in spinal cord injury repair and its neurological mechanism.Heliyon · 2024Review
- Article
- Survival of rat sciatic nerve segments preserved in storage solutionsNeural regeneration research · 2023Article
- Tyrosine-derived polymeric surfactant nanospheres insert cholesterol in cell membranes.Journal of colloid and interface science · 2023Article
- Methylene blue enhances polyethylene glycol-fusion repair of completely severed rat sciatic nerves.Neural regeneration research · 2021Article
- Different protein expression patterns in rat spinal nerves during Wallerian degeneration assessed using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation proteomics profiling.Neural regeneration research · 2020Article
- Polyethylene glycol (PEG) and other bioactive solutions with neurorrhaphy for rapid and dramatic repair of peripheral nerve lesions by PEG-fusion.Journal of neuroscience methods · 2019Article
- Advancing the technology for head transplants: From immunology to peripheral nerve fusion.Surgical neurology international · 2019Article
- Polyethylene glycol treated allografts not tissue matched nor immunosuppressed rapidly repair sciatic nerve gaps, maintain neuromuscular functions, and restore voluntary behaviors in female rats.Journal of neuroscience research · 2018Article
- Polyethylene glycol solutions rapidly restore and maintain axonal continuity, neuromuscular structures, and behaviors lost after sciatic nerve transections in female rats.Journal of neuroscience research · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Current Neuroscience dogma holds that transections or ablations of a segment of peripheral nerves produce: (1) Immediate loss of axonal continuity, sensory signaling, and motor control; (2) Wallerian rapid (1-3 days) degeneration of severed distal axons, muscle atrophy, and poor behavioral recovery after many months (if ever, after ablations) by slowly-regenerating (1 mm/d), proximal-stump outgrowths that must specifically reinnervate denervated targets; (3) Poor acceptance of microsutured nerve allografts, even if tissue-matched and immune-suppressed. Repair of transections/ablations by neurorrhaphy and well-specified-sequences of PEG-fusion solutions (one containing polyethylene glycol, PEG) successfully address these problems. However, conundrums and confusions regarding unorthodox and dramatic results of PEG-fusion repair in animal model systems often lead to misunderstandings. For example, (1) Axonal continuity and signaling is re-established within minutes by non-specifically PEG-fusing (connecting) severed motor and sensory axons across each lesion site, but remarkable behavioral recovery to near-unoperated levels takes several weeks; (2) Many distal stumps of inappropriately-reconnected, PEG-fused axons do not ever (Wallerian) degenerate and continuously innervate muscle fibers that undergo much less atrophy than otherwise-denervated muscle fibers; (3) Host rats do not reject PEG-fused donor nerve allografts in a non-immuno-privileged environment with no tissue matching or immunosuppression; (4) PEG fuses apposed open axonal ends or seals each shut (thereby preventing PEG-fusion), depending on the experimental protocol; (5) PEG-fusion protocols produce similar results in animal model systems and early human case studies. Hence, iconoclastic PEG-fusion data appropriately understood might provoke a re-thinking of some Neuroscience dogma and a paradigm shift in clinical treatment of peripheral nerve injuries.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.