Browsing by Author "Purdy, Michael"

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    Promotion of Peripheral Nerve Regeneration by Uniform Electric Field Application
    (2016) Purdy, Michael; Dalton, Colin; Dalton, Colin; Turner, Raymond W; Nygren, Anders; Syed, Naweed; Fear, Elise
    Peripheral nerve injury is a prevalent condition, afflicting millions of patients around the world and costing the healthcare system billions of dollars. It can lead to sensory loss and debilitating pain, and has a wide range of causes including trauma, infectious diseases, and diabetes. Although peripheral nerves have some inherent ability to regenerate, the recovery process is slow and complex, and regenerative outcomes are limited. However, electrical stimulation has been shown to accelerate recovery. In this work, uniform electric fields are explored in their capacity to encourage neurite outgrowth. A novel microelectrode array is designed to generate uniform fields for application to neurons in vitro, using snail and rat models. In parallel, an implantable nerve cuff was created to apply similar fields in vivo, in injured rat sciatic nerve models. Uniform electric field application was shown to increase overall neuritic outgrowth in snail neurons in vitro.