Word: cords
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...went at Kessler. Some days fear, some peace, some resentment. He had started out at Kessler "with a kind of arrogance and denial," but then began to accept the institute as the locus of his recovery. A nurse named Patty forced him to read a manual on spinal-cord injuries (he had refused at first). He read about the effect of paralysis on respiratory problems, on bowels. He read about sexual activity. He read about the dangers to which he was prone, like dysreflexia, a condition most commonly resulting from a clogged bowel or urinary tract, which the patient cannot...
...researchers' focus is on restoring connections that are intact after an injury but for some reason no longer work. This is where the problem of remyelination comes in. Studies of multiple sclerosis patients have proved useful; MS is an autoimmune disorder in which immune cells strip the spinal-cord nerves of their myelin. Decades ago, MS researchers began testing a derivative of coal tar, 4-aminopyridine (4-AP), to help MS patients gain as much use of their existing nerves as possible. The benefit of 4-AP in paralysis studies came when research with animals showed that a lack...
...University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, who has been involved in the trials, says, "We have seen improvements in sensation and motor function, reduced spasticity and reduced pain, and improvement in bowel, bladder and sexual functions." MS researchers may come up with yet another useful therapy for spinal-cord injuries. At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Moses Rodriguez is testing the use of antibodies as catalysts for the making of myelin in MS patients. Antibodies with a low affinity for myelin-producing cells in the central nervous system may stimulate these cells to divide and develop. Thus...
...damaged. A researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Alberto Aguayo, turned this assumption around by demonstrating that a nerve taken from an animal's leg and grafted onto the central nervous system allowed the nerve cells to grow along the transplanted nerve. Evidently there was nothing wrong with spinal-cord nerves, but something in the central nervous system was impeding their growth...
Much remains to be done before paraplegics can think about rising out of their wheelchair. Most spinal injuries in people occur when the cord is crushed, not severed, so it's not yet clear how this advance could be applied to them. What is important, however, is that Dr. Cheng and his colleagues have demonstrated that there are no fundamental biological barriers to repairing damaged spinal cords. And that's a big step forward...