What causes Wallerian degeneration?
Table of Contents
Wallerian degeneration is a condition that causes the loss of peripheral nerve function (peripheral nerve disease) through degeneration of nerve cells. This condition has two main causes: 1) degenerative diseases affecting nerve cells, such as Friedreich’s disease, and 2) traumatic injury to the peripheral nerves.
What are the 3 types of nerve injury?
Seddon2 classified nerve injuries into three broad categories; neurapraxia, axonotmesis, and neurotmesis.
What is wallerian syndrome?

Wallerian degeneration is an active process of retrograde degeneration of the distal end of an axon that is a result of a nerve lesion. It occurs between 7 to 21 days after the lesion occurs. After the 21st day, acute nerve degeneration will show on the electromyograph.
What happens to the nerve during Wallerian degeneration?
Wallerian degeneration is an active process of degeneration that results when a nerve fiber is cut or crushed and the part of the axon distal to the injury (i.e. farther from the neuron’s cell body) degenerates.

Is Wallerian degeneration painful?
Wallerian degeneration is a stereotype reaction of the peripheral nervous system to different kinds of nerve injury. This auto-destructive process is frequently associated with neuropathic pain, which can be very severe and resistant to treatment.
Can Wallerian degeneration heal?
Traumatic injury to peripheral nerves results in the loss of neural functions. Recovery by regeneration depends on the cellular and molecular events of Wallerian degeneration that injury induces distal to the lesion site, the domain through which severed axons regenerate back to their target tissues.
What is Wallerian degeneration?
Wallerian degeneration refers to the well-orchestrated morphologic and biochemical changes that occur in axons, Schwann cells, and macrophages distal to a site of nerve injury, resulting in the establishment of a microenvironment supportive of axonal regeneration.
What are symptoms of nerve damage?
The signs of nerve damage
- Numbness or tingling in the hands and feet.
- Feeling like you’re wearing a tight glove or sock.
- Muscle weakness, especially in your arms or legs.
- Regularly dropping objects that you’re holding.
- Sharp pains in your hands, arms, legs, or feet.
- A buzzing sensation that feels like a mild electrical shock.
What are the steps of Wallerian degeneration?
stage 1: degeneration of the axons and myelin sheaths with mild chemical changes (0-4 weeks) stage 2: rapid destruction of myelin protein fragments that were already degenerated, lipids remain intact (4-14 weeks) stage 3: gliosis replaces the degenerated axons and myelin sheaths, myelin lipid breakdown (>14 weeks)
How long does it take for Wallerian degeneration?
It begins 3 to 4 days after the injury and is completed after 12 to 14 days. Myelin destruction and removal are delayed considerably during slow Wallerian degeneration in Wlds mice, as are axon destruction and macrophage recruitment [16,17,42,60].
What does nerve pain feel like in hip?
If you have a pinched nerve in your hip, walking will make it worse. The more activity you do, the worse the pain should become. The pain may feel like a dull ache or it may be a sharp, burning pain. You may also experience painful numbness, especially in the buttocks, or a tingling sensation.