Basso, Beattie, and Bresnahan Scale Locomotor Assessment Following Spinal Cord Injury and Its Utility as a Criterion for Other Assessments

A wide variety of approaches have been used to help restore locomotor function after spinal cord injury (SCI). In the rat model, these range from biological techniques such as cell transplantation and axon regeneration to retraining methods such as activity-based rehabilitation. Correspondingly, there are many types of behavioral assessments employed to assess functional status and to help determine the best treatment approaches following (SCI). One assessment of locomotor function following SCI in the rat is the Basso, Beattie, and Bresnahan (BBB) scale, which is a categorical scale that subjectively documents limb movements and walking characteristics in an open-field environment. A categorical scale such as this that measures “global” attributes of locomotor ability lends itself well for use as a criterion to determine if an animal is functionally able to participate in other, more objective assessments. The BBB is a useful indicator of the basic overground locomotion of the animal and whether or not the animal would be capable of performing more difficult motor-related assessment tests that require specific abilities (agility, strength, and paw placing), such as the sensorimotor tests of horizontal ladder rung walking or treadmill-based gait analysis. Increasing the number and scope of the assessments performed in addition to the BBB provides a broader view of the functional recovery of animals following a variety of spinal cord injuries/severities and increased sensitivity to functional improvements. The optimal process for increasing the number and types of assessments is the use of dedicated personnel with long-term experience to ensure consistency and reliability in assessment scoring and repeatability. These factors are vital for comparisons within an individual laboratory’s ongoing research and for establishing standardization comparable among outside laboratories.