Hydrogen-rich saline promotes motor functional recovery following peripheral nerve autografting in rats
Zhang YG et al. · Exp Ther Med. 2015;10(2):727–732.
What kind of evidence is this?
Preclinical
Randomized two-group rat sciatic-nerve autograft experiment
Other neurological conditions
Other forms
Not reported in this record.
Not reported in this record.
Methods at a glance
Female Sprague-Dawley rats after reversal autografting of a 10-mm sciatic-nerve segment
60 rats, with n=10/group at each of the 4-, 8- and 12-week behavioral time points and smaller assay subsets
Daily treatment with assessments at 4, 8 and 12 weeks
Hydrogen-rich saline 5 mL/kg intraperitoneally every day
H₂ dissolved in saline — H₂ only, not Brown’s gas and not inhalation.
Purified H₂ dissolved in saline for four hours at 0.4 MPa; the final dissolved-H₂ concentration was not reported.
Not applicable — intraperitoneal saline, not gas inhalation; preparation flow was not reported.
No O₂ was co-delivered as part of the H₂ intervention.
Equal-volume normal saline daily
Outcomes and reported result
Sciatic functional index, nerve conduction, compound muscle action potentials, retrograde tracing, axon and myelin morphology and gastrocnemius atrophy
The article reports higher regenerated-neuron and myelinated-axon counts, improved electrophysiology and sciatic functional index, and less target-muscle atrophy with H₂-rich saline.
Allocation, preparation, dose, schedule and principal outcomes checked in the open-access full text.
A reported association, difference or mechanism is not automatically a clinical benefit. Null findings, outcome type, study design and precision all matter.
Cautions and applicability
Preclinical autograft model with repeated measures and assay-specific subsamples; final H₂ concentration was not reported and no human participants were studied.
Peripheral-nerve autografting in rats, not clinical nerve repair.
Not reported in this record.
Not reported in this record.
Not reported in this record.
No single-study GRADE certainty rating is assigned. Certainty is assessed by important outcome across a complete eligible evidence set, not by attaching a final grade to one source.
Sources and record status
PMID: 26622383 · DOI: 10.3892/etm.2015.2518
Open-access full text is available through PMC and the publisher.
Open-access PMC article and PubMed record; no retraction or expression of concern was shown in the checked records on 7 August 2026.
2026-08-10