Exercise, an Important Step for Peripheral Nerve Injury Recovery

Peripheral nerve injury is a relatively common clinical condition that predominantly results from sensory, motor, and nutritional disorders. These can be due to aging, external forces, diseases, or changes in physical and chemical environments. Although interventions, including relevant drugs and surgeries, have led to advancements in peripheral nerve repair, achieving complete recovery remains a challenge. Untimely treatment and rehabilitation can lead to lifelong disabilities and neurological pain. Exercise is a low-cost intervention that plays an active role in the rehabilitation of patients with many diseases, including peripheral nerve injuries. This narrative review, conducted in accordance with the Scale for the Assessment of Narrative Review Articles guidelines, synthesized evidence from searches of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases to summarize the molecular mechanisms of exercise and adjuvant therapies in peripheral nerve injury rehabilitation and the synergistic benefits of combined exercise and adjuvant therapy for peripheral nerve repair. This study revealed that the combination of exercise with either physical therapy or traditional Chinese medicine yielded superior therapeutic outcomes for peripheral nerve injuries attributable to aging, pathological conditions, and environmental factors. These benefits appear to be mediated by the suppression of oxidative stress and inflammatory responses, upregulation of neurotrophic factor expression, activation of autophagic pathways, modulation of endocrine homeostasis, and promotion of vascular network reconstruction. Furthermore, this study provides a theoretical foundation and a potential research direction for elucidating the targeted molecular mechanisms through which exercise ameliorates peripheral nerve injury.