Abstract:[Objectives] Cytokines participate in the immune response, mediate the inflammatory response, and then play a regulatory role in the regeneration and repair process of damaged tissues. [Methods] The tail of Scincella tsinlingensis was amputated with a razor blade to set up tail regeneration model, and immunohistochemical methods were used to detect the histologic localization and expression changes of cytokines interleukin, IL-6, 8, 1β (IL-6, IL-8, IL-1β), interleukin 1 receptor type 1 (IL-1R1), tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin, IL-10 (IL-10) at the stage of wound healing. Three visual fields of different parts were randomly selected under microscope with 400-fold magnification for immunopositive cell count. The results were expressed as “Mean ± SD”, one-way ANOVA and Tukey HSD were used to analyze the difference in the number of positive cells on different days. [Results] The results showed that six cytokines were positive in bone cells in the spinal cord and vertebrae. The number of IL-6 positive cells in the wound site and the dermis of proximal scale to the stump surface initially showed increasing and later decreasing of these cells, reaching a peak of 194.3 ± 24.9 at 3 d after tail amputation, the number of IL-8 positive cells in the wound surface was 107.7 ± 12.7, exceeding 43.7 ± 9.1 in the dermis at 3 d after tail amputation. The number of IL-1β and IL-1R1 positive cells initially showed increasing and later decreasing of these cells, and significantly more positive cells occurred in the wound site than in the dermis (P < 0.05). The TNF-α positive cells increased from 126.3 ± 35.0 at 0.5 d to 190.3 ± 12.1 at 3 d. The number of anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 positive cells initially showed increasing and later decreasing of these cells after tail amputation. At 0.5 d after tail amputation, positive cells reached 201 ± 17.8, which is significantly higher than that in the original tail (P < 0.05, Fig. 7). [Conclusion] The above results indicate that IL-6, IL-8, IL-1β, IL-1R1, TNF-α and IL-10 are consistent with the spatial distribution of myeloid-derived cells, jointly participate in tail wound healing of S. tsinlingensis, and may achieve scarless wound healing and promote blastema formation by maintaining an immuno-suppressive microenvironment.
