Posts tagged spinal cord injuries
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Nose cell transplant enables paralysed dogs to walk
Scientists have reversed paralysis in dogs after injecting them with cells grown from the lining of their nose.
The pets had all suffered spinal injuries which prevented them from using their back legs. The Cambridge University team is cautiously optimistic the technique could eventually have a role in the treatment of human patients. The study is the first to test the transplant in “real-life” injuries rather than laboratory animals.
In the study, funded by the Medical Research Council and published in the neurology journal Brain, the dogs had olfactory ensheathing cells from the lining of their nose removed. These were grown and expanded for several weeks in the laboratory.
Worm Regeneration May Lend A Hand in Human Healing
About the size of toenail clippings, planarians are freshwater flatworms that can re-form from tiny slivers. This feature not only lets them repair themselves, but it lets them reproduce by breaking apart and then creating new worms.
Here are two other important features: More than half of planarian genes have parallels in people, and some of their basic physiological systems operate like ours. By studying how these features behave as the worms regenerate, scientists might move one step closer to learning how to generate or regenerate human tissue and cells, such as insulin-producing cells for people with diabetes or nerve cells for patients with spinal cord injuries.
Spinal cord injury victims may be able to look forward to life beyond a wheelchair via a robotic leg prosthesis controlled by brain waves. Individuals with paraplegia due to spinal cord injury who are wheelchair-bound face serious health problems, or in medical terminology, comorbidities, such as metabolic derangement, heart disease, osteoporosis, and pressure ulcers. New research efforts are being directed toward restoring brain-controlled ambulation for those who suffer from spinal cord injuries.
Stem cells bring back feeling for paralysed patients
03 September 2012 by Andy Coghlan
For the first time, people with broken spines have recovered feeling in previously paralysed areas after receiving injections of neural stem cells.
(Image: Medical Images/Getty Images)
Three people with paralysis received injections of 20 million neural stem cells directly into the injured region of their spinal cord. The cells, acquired from donated fetal brain tissue, were injected between four and eight months after the injuries happened. The patients also received a temporary course of immunosuppressive drugs to limit rejection of the cells.
None of the three felt any sensation below their nipples before the treatment. Six months after therapy, two of them had sensations of touch and heat between their chest and belly button. The third patient has not seen any change.
"The fact we’ve seen responses to light touch, heat and electrical impulses so far down in two of the patients is very unexpected," says Stephen Huhn of StemCells, the company in Newark, California, developing and testing the treatment. "They’re really close to normal in those areas now in their sensitivity," he adds.
"We are very intrigued to see that patients have gained considerable sensory function," says Armin Curt of Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, where the patients were treated, and principal investigator in the trial.
The data are preliminary, but “these sensory changes suggest that the cells may be positively impacting recovery”, says Curt, who presented the results today in London at the annual meeting of the International Spinal Cord Society.