This therapy could stitch together damaged spinal cords

NewsBharati    16-Jun-2018
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Mumbai, June 16: Here’s the thing about the spinal cord: you’ve only got one. And right now, if you injure it, doctors can’t fix that. All they can do is try to reduce further damage. But a new, experimental gene therapy may change that. In new research published Thursday, rats paralyzed from spinal cord injuries were able to move their legs and paws again.


 

When a person’s (or rat’s) spinal cord gets damaged, they may lose some or all of the ability to control certain limbs or parts of their body, depending on where the injury occurred. Typically, a scar blocks the nerve cells on the spine from communicating with each other and with the muscles they control.

Here’s the thing about the spinal cord: you’ve only got one. And right now, if you injure it, doctors can’t fix that. All they can do is try to reduce further damage.

But a new, experimental gene therapy may change that. In new research published Thursday, rats paralyzed from spinal cord injuries were able to move their legs and paws again.

When a person’s (or rat’s) spinal cord gets damaged, they may lose some or all of the ability to control certain limbs or parts of their body, depending on where the injury occurred. Typically, a scar blocks the nerve cells on the spine from communicating with each other and with the muscles they control.

If this were possible to do in humans, it could have a huge impact. “Recovering the use of the hands is the top priority for the majority of individuals living with spinal cord injuries,” researcher Elizabeth Bradbury said. “It would enable them to do everyday tasks such as washing and dressing independently, picking up a coffee cup, and would be life-changing.”

There is not yet any way to reverse this damage in humans, but doing so is a big priority for medical researchers. That’s because giving people control over their paralyzed limbs, especially their hands could be a huge step forward in restoring their ability to live independently. Right now, people may undergo physical therapy or look to prosthetic limbs to restore as much function as possible. But reversing the nerve damage itself would, theoretically, do even more to restore more normalcy to people’s lives.

It’s not yet clear whether that will be possible. The new research represents a pre-clinical trial that was conducted on lab rats — there are still several stages of testing needed to show that the new gene therapy can help humans.