The Preliminary Clinical Study On The Expression Of Phosphorylated P38MAPK In Cervical Degenerative Intervertebral Disc

Cervical intervertebral disc degeneration(CIDD), the prerequisite and basis for a series of cervical degenerative disease, plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of cervical spondlosis. Previous studies showed that local chronic inflammation involves in the process of disc degeneration. p38MAPK, one of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), which composes of 360 amino acids, is a 38KD protein, and it plays an important role in the signal transduction pathway in the inflammatory process. In order to illustrate the involvement of p38MAPK in the disc degeneration, the degenerative NP were collected from cervical spondylotic patients who were received anterior cervical decompression fusion, pathological, immunohistochemical and western-blot methods were used to observe the pathological changes of nucleus pulposus with the increasing degeneration and the location of p-p38MAPK in the nucleus pulposus cells, to detect the p-p38MAPK expression in degenerative nucleus pulposus of human. The results show that, with the increasing degree of disc degeneration, the collagen fibers were irregularly arranged, fibers thickened, polymerised into blot, progressing into fibrosis; p-p38MAPK was positive in nucleus, with the increasing degeneration of the nucleus, p-p38MAPK expression was significantly increasing; the positive rate of expression of p-p38MAPK increased gradually with the severity of degeneration. Statistical differences of positive intensity were conspicuous between every two groups; phosphorylated-p38MAPK expression was correlating with the grades of degenerative disc, there was a straight-line relationship between p-p38MAPK expression and the grades of the degeneration cervical discs:Y=0.423X-0.675. Phosphorylated-p38MAPK signaling pathway was involved in the degeneration of nucleus pulposus in cervical disc.