Word: myelin
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...Sciences suggests that neuroscientists may be getting a little more daring. A team of researchers reports that they've managed to reverse a neural disorder in mice that affects not just a single region of the brain but the entire organ. The genetically based disease prevents the formation of myelin sheathing around nerve fibers. Without that insulation, signals go awry and the mice develop tremors (similar to what happens to humans with multiple sclerosis...
...disease. In this case, though, the stem cells had to migrate throughout the mice's brains, then figure out what kinds of cells to turn into--a much more complicated process. Yet that's just what they did, fanning out and transforming themselves into oligodendrocytes, which started churning out myelin insulation. In 60% of cases, the tremors stopped almost completely...
...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 of myelin was significant...
...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, Rodriguez argues, paralysis patients may prompt their own bodies to produce the myelin their axons need...
...result is gaping holes in the spinal cord. Long nerve fibers, or axons, that originate in the brain and weave down the spinal cord, eventually connecting with other nerves that branch to muscles as distant as the toes, are torn and stripped of their protective fatty coat of myelin. The myelin sheath is like the rubber coating on electrical wire. Without it, the nerves cannot function...