Wallerian Degeneration or Anterograde degeneration is a medical condition where there is a cutting or crushing of the nerve fiber after an injury or when there is part distal to the injury as in the case of a separation of the axon from the neuron's cell nucleus (Trauma and Wallerian Degeneration, University of California, San Francisco).

Diagnosis includes medical examination of the distal nerves from the site of the injury which may be separated from their cell bodies in the brain stem inasmuch as the axonal skeleton tends to disintegrates and the axonal membrane breaks apart after the injury.

Treatment includes physical examination particularly the swollen affected part which may be the root or the cause of the Wallerian Degeneration.

Symptoms of the Wallerian Degeneration includes acute axonal degeneration or AAD which is the rapid separation of the proximal and distal ends which usually occur within the thirty minutes of the cause or the injury. The degeneration follows swelling of the axolemma. The axonal degeneration is usually followed by the decrease of the myelin sheath and the infiltration by the macrophages which may be accompanied by Schwann cells which serves to clear the debris from the degeneration (Waller A. “Experiments on the section of the glossopharyngeal and hypoglossal nerves of the frog, and observations of the alterations produced thereby in the structure of their primitive fibres.” Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 1850, 140:423–29).

Wallerian Degeneration usually is cause or occurs after axonal injury in both the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system.

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