In rats with a severe spinal cord injury that caused tail paralysis, a single dose of the peptide BPC‑157 given just minutes after the injury helped the animals start to recover quickly, reduced swelling and bleeding in the spinal cord, and led to long‑term functional improvement when the peptide was continued in the drinking water for a month.

Recently, marked therapeutic effects pertaining to the recovery of injured rat spinal cords (1 min compression injury of the sacrocaudal spinal cord (S2-Co1) resulting in tail paralysis) appeared after a single intraperitoneal administration of the stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 at 10 min post-injury. Besides the demonstrated rapid and sustained recovery (1 year), we showed the particular points of the immediate effect of the BPC 157 therapy that began rapidly after its administration, (i) soon after injury (10 min), or (ii) later (4 days), in the rats with a definitive spinal cord injury. Specifically, in counteracting spinal cord hematoma and swelling, (i) in rats that had undergone acute spinal cord injury, followed by intraperitoneal BPC 157 application at 10 min, we focused on the first 10-30 min post-injury period (assessment of gross, microscopic, and gene expression changes). Taking day 4 post-injury as the definitive injury, (ii) we focused on the immediate effects after the BPC 157 intragastric application over 20 min of the post-therapy period. Comparable long-time recovery was noted in treated rats which had definitive tail paralysis: (iii) the therapy was continuously given per orally in drinking water, beginning at day 4 after injury and lasting one month after injury. BPC 157 rats presented only discrete edema and minimal hemorrhage and increased <i>Nos1</i>, <i>Nos2</i>, and <i>Nos3</i> values (30 min post-injury, (i)) or only mild hemorrhage, and only discrete vacuolation of tissue (day 4, (ii)). In the day 4-30 post-injury study (iii), BPC 157 rats rapidly presented tail function recovery, and no demyelination process (Luxol fast blue staining).