Abstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe trauma of the central nervous system characterized by high disability and high mortality. Clinical progress has been achieved in understanding the pathological mechanism of SCI and its early treatment, but the results are unsatisfactory. In China, increasing attention has been paid to the role of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of SCI. In particular, extracts from the leaves of Ginkgo biloba (maidenhair tree), which have been reported to exert anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and repair a variety of active cellular damage, have been applied therapeutically for centuries. In this study, we established a rat SCI model to investigate the effects of Ginkgo biloba leaves on decompression at different stages of SCI. The application of Ginkgo biloba leaves during the decompression of SCI at different time points, the neurological recovery of SCI, and the underlying molecular mechanism were explored. The findings provide reliable experimental data that reveal the mechanism of GBI (Ginkgo biloba injection) in the clinical treatment of SCI.