State Budget Puts Spinal Cord Injury Research in Jeopardy

State trooper Paul Richter was lying on the ground, looking up at the man who had just shot him. Death seemed all but certain. The Queens-born Richter had been shot in the leg, arm and neck while checking out a vehicle that had been used in the robbery of a sporting goods store, and the shooter seemed ready to finish him off.

“Nah, he’s dead,” the shooter’s accomplice said, giving Richter a reprieve. But the 1973 encounter in Lake Placid left Richter paralyzed for months. Eventually he was able to regain some function of his legs and can walk with the assistance of a cane. Continue Reading »

Research network for spinal cord injury beginning clinical trial

Many treatments to limit or reverse the devastating results of spinal cord injury have shown promise in the laboratory yet have never been brought to clinical trials because of the formidable infrastructure required to test and approve them for human use.

A unique partnership between the military and the Christopher Reeve Foundation is addressing this challenge.

The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center is supporting the development of the foundation’s North American Clinical Trials Network, which has created the largest SCI active clinical trial database in the United States and will begin its first trial in early 2010. Continue Reading »

Getting a kick out of research

A Dalhousie University professor and an international team of researchers have discovered what makes us kick.

Dr. Rob Brownstone, along with colleagues in New York and Scotland, discovered a group of nerve cells that are critical to regulating how much force muscles use when performing movements. Continue Reading »

Lessons we learn from review of urological procedures performed during three decades in a spinal cord injury patient: a case report

Background We review urological procedures performed on a spinal cord injury patient during three decades.Case presentation A 23-year-old male patient sustained T-12 paraplegia in 1971. In 1972, intravenous urography showed both kidneys functioning well; division of external urethral sphincter was performed. Continue Reading »

Transplantation Technique Feasible for Spinal Cord Injury

(HealthDay News) — In the treatment of spinal cord injury, transplantation of readily available mono-nuclear bone marrow cells may be an alternative to the use of bone marrow stromal cells, according to an animal study published in the Nov. 15 issue of Spine. Continue Reading »

Salamanders – What Can They Teach us About Spinal Cord Injury?

(HealthNewsDigest.com) – GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For more than 400 years, scientists have studied the amazing regenerative power of salamanders, trying to understand how these creatures routinely repair injuries that would usually leave humans and other mammals paralyzed — or worse.

Now, fueled by a highly competitive National Institutes of Health Grand Opportunity grant of $2.4 million, a multi-institutional team of researchers associated with the University of Florida McKnight Brain Institute’s Regeneration Project has begun creating genomic tools necessary to compare the extraordinary regenerative capacity of the Mexican axolotl salamander with established mouse models of human disease and injury. Continue Reading »

New approach to prevent spinal cord damage

Washington, Nov 8(ANI): Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College have suggested a new approach to prevent paralysis following a spinal cord injury.

They believe that permanent nerve damage may be avoided by raising levels of a compound that converts to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) – the active form of vitamin B3.

The compound would potentially be administered immediately following spinal cord injury. Continue Reading »

Experts put their heads together

Neuroscientists cluster in La Jolla

Any chance of recovery from a spinal-cord injury, however small, depends on swift treatment. Without that, damaged nerve cells wither, some die and the body becomes paralyzed.

But perhaps the paralysis isn’t permanent. Neuroscientists at the University of California San Diego have for the first time successfully regrown axons – fibers that connect nerve cells and conduct their essential communications – in the damaged spinal cords of rats with untreated injuries that are six weeks to more than a year old. Continue Reading »

Researchers Explore New Ways To Prevent Spinal Cord Damage Using A Vitamin B3 Precursor

Weill Cornell Medical College team receives $2.5 million New York State research grant to undertake laboratory study

Substances naturally produced by the human body may one day help prevent paralysis following a spinal cord injury, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College. A recent $2.5 million grant from the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Board will fund their research investigating this possibility. Continue Reading »

Regeneration can be achieved after chronic spinal cord injury

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that regeneration of central nervous system axons can be achieved in rats even when treatment delayed is more than a year after the original spinal cord injury.

“The good news is that when axons have been cut due to spinal cord injury, they can be coaxed to regenerate if a combination of treatments is applied,” said lead author Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Center for Neural Repair at UC San Diego, and neurologist at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health System. “The chronically injured axon is not dead.” Continue Reading »