Study: L-carnitine has neuroprotective effects on injured sciatic nerve of rats

Several studies have demonstrated that L-carnitine exhibits neuroprotective effects on injured sciatic nerve of rats with diabetes mellitus.

Dr. -mm- Zeynep Avsar, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Turkey and his team proposed a hypothesis that L-carnitine exhibits neuroprotective effects on injured sciatic nerve of rats. Rat sciatic nerve was crush injured by a forceps and exhibited degenerative changes. After intragastric administration of 50 and 100 mg/kg L-carnitine for 30 days, axon area, myelin sheath area, axon diameter, myelin sheath diameter, and numerical density of the myelinated axons of injured sciatic nerve were similar to normal, and the function of injured sciatic nerve also improved significantly. These findings suggest that L-carnitine exhibits neuroprotective effects on sciatic nerve crush injury in rats. This paper was published in Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 10, 2014).