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REVIEW article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Inflammation

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1619337

This article is part of the Research TopicThe Regeneration and Intervention of Neurological Tissue after Acute and Chronic Injuries: from Benchside to BedsideView all articles

Regulatory Effect of Inflammatory Mediators in Spinal Cord Injury

Provisionally accepted
Wencong  ZengWencong ZengFang-Jun  ZengFang-Jun Zeng*
  • Ganzhou People's Hospital, Ganzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe disabling central nervous system injury that can lead to severe sensory and motor dysfunction, and even paralysis. Depending on the mechanism of injury, SCI can be divided into primary injury and secondary injury.While secondary injury is the most critical stage in the pathophysiological process of SCI, which is the uncontrolled destructive cascade that follows. At present, symptoms are mainly alleviated and endogenous repair mechanisms are improved through drug intervention, surgical decompression and rehabilitation therapy, but they cannot directly promote nerve regeneration and functional recovery. Recently, an increasing number of studies have shown that the inflammatory response is a core link in secondary injury and plays a crucial role in regulating the pathological progression of acute and chronic SCI. Inflammatory mediators are key participants in the inflammatory response, which can trigger various neuropathological conditions and neurological dysfunction and are related to the severity of the injury. They are being explored as potential therapeutic targets for SCI and related diseases. Therefore, reducing the production of pro-inflammatory mediators is feasible and will also become a research hotspot in the future. This article summarizes the main sources of inflammatory mediators related to injury, their expression regulation, the key signaling pathways that regulate their production (such as Toll-like receptors, NF-κB, MAPK pathways, etc.), and their impact on the pathophysiology of SCI. In addition, treatment methods such as chemical antagonists, plant extracts and hormone therapy have been introduced to inhibit the expression of inflammatory mediators in order to control and improve the inflammatory microenvironment. This article mainly relies on preclinical research evidence to deeply analyze the core position of inflammatory mediators, providing a theoretical basis and direction guidance for the development of more effective SCI anti-inflammatory treatments.

Keywords: spinal cord injury (SCI), Inflammatory Response, inflammatory mediators, regulatory mechanisms, therapeutic targets

Received: 28 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Zeng and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Fang-Jun Zeng, Ganzhou People's Hospital, Ganzhou, China

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