Spinal Cord Histology Analysis

The histology of spinal cord was evaluated by hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining and Pischinger methylene blue staining (Khedkar et al., 2012 (link)). The left ventral section of spinal cord was fixed in formalin and embedded into paraffin. The 6 μm coronal sections were cut from the tissue block and stained with HE stain or Pischinger's methylene blue before evaluated microscopically with an Olympus IX71 Inverted Fluorescence Phase Contrast Microscope (Olympus, Shanghai, China). The areas of cavities were assessed using Digimizer software (MedCalc Software bvba, Ostend, Belgian) and number of dendrites was quantified with ImageJ software (NIH, Bethesda, MD).