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

Dr. Ümmü 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).

Article: " L-carnitine alleviates sciatic nerve crush injury in rats: functional and electron microscopy assessments" by Ümmü Zeynep Avsar1, Umit Avsar2, Ali Aydin3, Muhammed Yayla4, Berna Ozturkkaragoz5, Harun Un6, Murat Saritemur7, Tolga Mercantepe8 (1 Department of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Yakutiye, Erzurum, Turkey; 2 Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Yakutiye, Erzurum, Turkey; 3 Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Yakutiye, Erzurum, Turkey; 4 Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Yakutiye, Erzurum, Turkey; 5 Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Agrı University, Agrı, Turkey; 6 Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Agrı University, Agrı, Turkey; 7 Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Yakutiye, Erzurum, Turkey; 8 Department of Histology and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Yakutiye, Erzurum, Turkey)

Avsar ÜZ, Avsar U, Aydin A,Yayla M, Ozturkkaragoz B, Un H, Saritemur M, Mercantepe T. L-carnitine alleviates sciatic nerve crush injury in rats: functional and electron microscopy assessments. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(10):1020-1024.