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Gel Enables Severed Spinal Cord Fibers to Regrow
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A nano-engineered gel that
inhibits the formation of scar tissue at the site of a spinal injury and
enables severed spinal cord fibers to regenerate has been developed by
researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago.
They noted that nerve fibers do have the ability to regrow after a
spinal injury, but they're blocked by scar tissue that develops around the
injury.
After the gel is injected as a liquid into the spinal cord, it
self-assembles into a scaffold that supports new nerve fibers as they grow
up and down the spinal cord and penetrate the site of the injury.
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Promising new drug for spinal cord injuries
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 Each year in the United States, about 11,000 people suffer a spinal cord injury.
Recent research shows what happens in the first days after an injury
has a big impact on how well patients recover. And a new drug is showing big promise. Two years ago, Johnathen Picco fell through a roof doing construction. "After my operation, they said I wouldn't be able to walk again," he said.
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Experimental Russian stem cell treatments for spinal injury credited for woman's progress
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 When Kadi DeHaan took her first steps in December, two years after a
car accident forced her into a wheelchair, she did it in typical Kadi
style: low-key, nonchalant and with a confident grin.
Apparently, she knew all along she would walk away from her pink and
black wheelchair and her customized leg braces, despite a spinal cord
injury at chest level and a grim prognosis that she would never walk
again. "Whenever it happens, it happens," she would tell her mom.
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Running Icy Cold Saline Shown To Prevent Paralysis Among Spinal Cord Injuries
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 Lowering Body's Temperature Protects Against Damage
According to the Spinal Cord Injury Information Network, there are
about 11,000 new cases of spinal cord injuries each year in the United
States. As of June 2006, there were about 253,000 people living with a
spinal cord injury.
When a spinal cord injury occurs, there is the primary insult -- the
impact -- which neither doctors nor patients can do anything about. But
there are also secondary injuries -- the damage that happens in the
minutes, hours, days and weeks after the primary injury.
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Paralyzed Boy Walks Again
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 Chase Ford's life changed forever on June 4, 2005.
He fell and
hit the back of his head on the wooden arm of a couch at a baby
sitter's, and within days he was paralyzed, unable to move due to a
spinal cord injury.]
"How can you tell a child who is active that
he will not be active again based on what the doctors have told you?"
said his mother, Renee.
In stepped researchers from the University of Louisville and Frazier Rehab.
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British scientists developing spinal injury treatment
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British scientists are developing a treatment
which could allow damaged nerve fibers to regenerate within the spinal cord.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have identified a bacteria
enzyme called chondroitinase, which is capable of digesting molecules within
scar tissue to allow some nerve fibers to regrow, according to the BBC on
Sunday.
Spinal injuries are difficult to treat because the body cannot repair
damage to the brain or spinal cord. Nerves could regenerate, but they are
blocked by the scar tissue that forms at the site of the spinal injury.
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After Spinal Cord Injury, Ohio State Program Gives Hope
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 An innovative training device
being used at The Ohio State University Medical Center may lead to
improved mobility and quality of life for people with spinal cord
injuries.
Physicians are looking at the use of bodyweight support and treadmill
therapy, known as locomotor training, to help patients improve various
skills after suffering incomplete paralysis. The unique therapy, often
associated with the rehabilitation regimen used by the late actor
Christopher Reeve, is only available at a handful of hospitals around
the country.
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Cethrin for treatment of acute spinal cord injury
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Alseres pharmaceuticals concludes enrollment in the Cethrin phase I/IIa clinical trial in acute spinal cord injury
Alseres
Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced that it has concluded enrollment in
the Phase I/IIa clinical trial of Cethrin in acute spinal cord injury
(SCI). A total of 48 subjects have been enrolled at 9 sites in the
United States and Canada. We expect to release periodic updates of the
data in 2008 following protocol-specified patient evaluations.
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China Offers Unproven Medical Treatments
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 They're paralyzed from diving accidents and car
crashes, disabled by Parkinson's, or blind. With few options available
at home in America, they search the Internet for experimental
treatments — and often land on Web sites promoting stem cell
treatments in China.They mortgage their houses
and their hometowns hold fundraisers as they scrape together the tens
of thousands of dollars needed for travel and the hope for a miracle
cure. A number of these medical tourists claim some success when they return home:
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Desperate Americans seek unproven cell treatments in China
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They're paralyzed from diving accidents and car crashes, disabled by
Parkinson's, or blind. With few options available at home in America,
they search the Internet for experimental treatments _ and often land
on Web sites promoting stem cell treatments in China.
They mortgage their houses and their hometowns hold fundraisers as they
scrape together the tens of thousands of dollars needed for travel and
the hope for a miracle cure.
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Treatments
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