The neuroprotective and therapeutic potential of resveratrol for traumatic spinal cord injuries: a systematic review

Traumatic spinal cord injuries are frequent CNS injuries that occur due to circumstances such as falls or accidents. Traumatic spinal cord injuries are more common in the older age group and in men, with high incidence and prevalence explained by the absence of an efficient pharmacological or neurosurgical treatment. Traumatic SCI can be classified as primary or secondary injuries that can eventually lead to death or physical dependence. Resveratrol is a stilbene polyphenol plant extract that has shown promising remedial effect on a wide spectrum of injuries and diseases including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and CNS injuries. Many studies tried to pinpoint if there is any neuroprotective effect targeted against the damage caused by traumatic spinal cord injury. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to systemically assess and analyze these findings to take a stand from the hypothesis. This systematic review adheres to PRISMA guidelines (2020), when the process started by a comprehensive search strategy from 2015 to 2025 tailored for four databases. Primary and secondary screening were done to finally retrieve eight articles out of the initially discovered 456 studies. Data extraction, analysis and quality assessment were then done to synthesize the appropriate results and findings. The consistent results showed that resveratrol significantly modulates traumatic SCI and offers neuroprotection leading to improvement in motor function recovery as a result of preserving more motor neurons, upregulating autophagy but downregulating apoptosis, neuroinflammation, oxidative stress and ferroptosis through specific biochemical molecular pathways. Therefore, resveratrol shows promise for treating traumatic spinal cord injury which encourages the conduction of more robust preclinical studies and early phase clinical trials.