Monthly Archives: November 2009
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.
Telerehabilitation with ReJoyce and FES
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.
Spinal injuries up among troops
BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Afghan insurgents are using roadside bombs powerful enough to throw the military’s new 14-ton, blast-resistant vehicles into the air, increasing broken-back injuries among U.S. troops.
Doctors at the U.S. military hospital here say more than 100 U.S. servicemembers have suffered crushed or damaged spinal columns from being thrown around inside armored Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles in the last five months.
Cornell researcher uses stimulus money to study spinal cord injury recovery
More than 10,000 people suffer a spinal cord injury in the U.S. each year, many of whom never recover the ability to walk. With new funding to study the neural networks for locomotion in rodents, Ronald Harris-Warrick, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior, hopes to find ways for spinal cord injury victims to get back on their feet.
With a grant of almost $700,000 from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), Harris-Warrick will continue research that had previously been funded by New York state and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
Customers Experience of the 3 BerkelBike Models
These are the experiences of users of the three different BerkelBike models.
Dachshund Get’s Paralysis Treatment and Walks Again!
Spinal cord injury patients around the world may draw new hope for the future from the story of a paralyzed little dog who was able to walk again after receiving an experimental spinal cord treatment. Cambridge University scientists pioneered the new treatment that made it possible for Henry the dachshund to walk after he was paralyzed by a severe spinal cord injury.
Enzyme eats scar tissue that blocks spine repair
CHICAGO, Nov 2 (Reuters) – U.S. researchers have engineered an enzyme that can gobble up scar tissue formed after spinal cord injuries, overcoming a key hurdle to getting injured nerves to reconnect and heal.
Spinal cord injuries trigger a cascade of events in the body that block the growth of nerve cells after a spinal cord injury.
“One of the major impediments has been this scar tissue that has formed,” said Ravi Bellamkonda, a biomedical engineering professor at Georgia Institute of Technology Research and at Emory University, whose study appears in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
