Table 2.

Contralateral Lower Extremity Sciatic Nerve CD and Experimental Groups.

Group (n = 8)	Length of CD injury	Experiment	Endpoint
Sciatic nerve transection followed by CD injury	8 weeks	No treatment	8 weeks
Sciatic nerve transection followed by CD injury	8 weeks	Systemic GH Therapy	8 weeks
Sciatic nerve transection followed by CD injury	1 week	No Treatment	1 week
Sciatic nerve transection (naïve)	None	No Treatment	8 weeks

All lower extremity contralateral limbs served as internal experimental groups to assess the effects of GH on SC proliferation/senescence (via qPCR) in chronically-denervated sciatic nerves and gastrocnemius muscle atrophy. As presented in Table 1, systemic GH therapy consisted of twice daily subcutaneous back injections of highly purified lyophilized pituitary porcine GH (0.6 mg/day) throughout the chronic denervation period. Abbrev: GH = Growth Hormone; CD = chronic denervation.