Research/Government News
New Jersey Medical Team Relieves Paraplegic Pressure Ulcers by Rare Nerve Transfer Procedure (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, November 13 -- 65-Year Old Gunshot Victim Received Complex Procedure to Avoid Life-Threatening Ulcers
Barack Obama 'to reverse Bush policy on stem cell research and oil drilling' (Click to Read)
MONDAY, November 10 -- Barack Obama, the US president-elect, will use executive powers to reverse his predecessor's policies on stem cell research and oil exploration in national parks, a senior aide has indicated.
Repairing the Damaged Spinal Cord (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, November 6 -- For Chinese gymnast Sang Lan, the cause was a highly publicized headfirst fall during warm-ups for the 1998 Goodwill Games. For Richard Castaldo of Littleton, Colo., it was bullets; for onetime football player Dennis Byrd, a 1992 collision on the field; and for a child named Samantha Jennifer Reed, a fall during infancy. Whatever the cause, the outcome of severe damage to the spinal cord is too often the same: full or partial paralysis and loss of sensation below the level of the injury.
Stem cell treatment available overseas (Click to Read)
SUNDAY, November 2 -- Every three months, David Martin, a quadriplegic, returns to a small clinic here in the Russian capital for therapy he cannot legally get back home in Kalamazoo, Mich.: injections of stem cells taken from his own body, at a cost of $12,000 per visit.
UK's NICE Recommends Spinal Cord Stimulation for Patients with Chronic Neuropathic Pain (Click to Read)
MONDAY, October 27 -- Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX - News) today welcomed an announcement by the U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommending the use of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) for patients with chronic neuropathic pain. In its comprehensive final guidance, NICE confirmed that SCS is both safe and clinically effective in these patients. Importantly, NICE also concluded that SCS is cost-effective when used to treat patients with chronic neuropathic pain, despite the use of conservative modeling techniques in the appraisal.
Mind power moves paralysed limbs (Click to Read)
WEDNESDAY, October 15 -- Scientists have shown it is possible to harness brain signals and redirect them to make paralysed limbs move. The technology bypasses injuries that stop nerve signals travelling from the brain to the muscles, offering hope for people with spinal damage.
Breakthrough could help heal spinal cord injuries without pain (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, September 23 -- Researchers at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine say manipulating embryo-derived stem cell precursors prior to transplanting them holds the key to using stem cell technologies for repairing spinal cord injuries in humans.
'Tongue computing' could help disabled (Click to Read)
MONDAY, August 25 -- The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.
Neuropathy shot (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, August 19 -- Peripheral neuropathy is a type of pain caused by damage to the peripheral nerves. These nerves carry messages to and from the body to the brain and spinal cord. When damage or injury occurs, the brain gets the wrong signals, leading to weakness, numbness, burning and pain in the affected nerve or group of nerves.
Up-to-minute techniques may let paraplegic walk (Click to Read)
SUNDAY, August 3 -- Four years ago, Maggie Anderson's spine was crushed when the minivan she was riding in hit black ice, flipped and landed on her. Anderson will forever regret not strapping on a seat belt that day in Idaho. But at 21, she's found joy in life, good friends and even a chance of escaping her wheelchair.
Identifcation Of Cells For Spinal-Cord Repair Could Lead To Nonsurgical Treatment For Injuries (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, July 22 -- A researcher at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has pinpointed stem cells within the spinal cord that, if persuaded to differentiate into more healing cells and fewer scarring cells following an injury, may lead to a new, non-surgical treatment for debilitating spinal-cord injuries.
Locomotor Training Restores Walking Function In Child With Spinal Cord Injury (Click to Read)
WEDNESDAY, June 5 -- A new report shows that a non-ambulatory (unable to walk or stand) child with a cervical spinal cord injury was able to restore basic walking function after intensive locomotor training. The case study, published in Physical Therapy (May 2008), the scientific journal of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), evaluated the effects of locomotor training in a 4 ½ year-old-boy, who had no ability to walk following a gunshot wound sixteen months earlier.
Australian man breathes thanks to stem cell treatment (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, May 27 -- A paralysed Australian man claims a controversial embryonic stem cell treatment has allowed him to breath on his own for the first time in 14 years.
Regenerative medicine offers hope in spinal cord injury (Click to Read)
WEDNSEDAY, May 14 -- Spinal cord injury (SCI) can be a catastrophic event for the individual. Traditionally, such injuries were viewed as permanent, irreversible neurological dysfunction, but over time research has shown some neuroplastic capability of the injured adult mammalian spinal cord. However, spontaneous functional recovery post-SCI is very modest.
Advances offer hope for spinal injury patients (Click to Read)
SUNDAY, MAY 4 -- There is no cure for a spinal cord injury, but much headway has been made in clinical research that could lead to one. Other therapies have helped to restore some function in spinal cord injured patients. A look at some efforts:
Research Analyzes The Effectiveness Of Decompression Surgery In Patients With Cervical Spinal Cord Injuries (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, April 29 -- Every year, nearly 12,000 individuals in the United States and Canada, mostly young adults, sustain a spinal cord injury (SCI). According to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), SCI costs an estimated $9.7 billion each year in the United States alone. Although there are some surgical interventions, such as decompression, which neurosurgeons administer to SCI patients after injury, these procedures have not dramatically improved overall recovery and outcome.
Animal Models Not Suitable For Spinal Cord Injury Research (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, April 29 -- Research on traumatic spinal cord injuries is hampered by a reliance on animal experiments that don't accurately predict human outcomes, says a new study in the upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Reviews in the Neurosciences. The review was written by scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Process Identified That May Help Treat Parkinson's, Spinal Cord Injuries (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, April 17 -- A new discovery by University of Minnesota researchers may lead to a better understanding of how the spinal cord controls how people walk. These insights could help lead to treatments for central nervous system maladies such as Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries.
Gel Enables Severed Spinal Cord Fibers to Regrow (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, April 10 -- A nano-engineered gel that inhibits the formation of scar tissue at the site of a spinal injury and enables severed spinal cord fibers to regenerate has been developed by researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Nanotechnology may help spinal cord injury (Click to Read)
MONDAY, April 7 -- U.S. researchers say they have created a nano-engineered gel that can enable severed spinal cord fibers to regenerate and grow.
Medical 'miracle' makes debut (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, April 3 -- Scott Oster thanks God he survived a paralyzing injury, but says local spinal cord researcher Dr. Richard Stein is the reason he can walk.
New Nanotechnology For Spinal Cord Injury Shows Potential (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, April 3 -- A spinal cord injury often leads to permanent paralysis and loss of sensation below the site of the injury because the damaged nerve fibers can't regenerate. The nerve fibers or axons have the capacity to grow again, but don't because they're blocked by scar tissue that develops around the injury.
Everett visits paralysis researchers (Click to Read)
SATURDAY, March 29 -- Kevin Everett and Marc Buoniconti each suffered a severe spinal cord injury while making a tackle. The difference between them on Friday was the result of more than 20 years of research.
Mind over body: new hope for quadriplegics (Click to Read)
MONDAY, March 10 -- Around 2.5 million people worldwide are wheelchair bound because of spinal injuries. Half of them are quadriplegic, paralysed from the neck down. European researchers are now offering them new hope thanks to groundbreaking technology that uses brain signals alone to control computers, artificial limbs and even wheelchairs.
Ray of hope for spinal cord patients (Click to Read)
FRIDAY, March 7 -- The researcher who found a way to get paralyzed rats back walking is now in Colorado and predicts huge breakthroughs in treatment of human spinal cord injuries in half a decade.
"We've reached a stage where I'm comfortable saying that within the next five years, we will have truly effective new therapies from people with spinal cord injuries," Dr. Stephen Davies said this week.
Spinal Cord Injury May Not Increase Risk Of Heart Disease (Click to Read)
TUESDAY, February 26 -- Americans who live with spinal cord injury do not appear to be at greater risk of developing carbohydrate and lipid disorders such as insulin resistance, diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance, and high or low blood cholesterol levels risk factors for heart disease than able-bodied persons, according to a new evidence review by HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Progress after Adult Stem Cell Therapy Offers New Hope to Iowa Spinal Cord Injury Patient (Click to Read)
THURSDAY, February 7 -- Rich Welsh, a 28 year-old insurance agent from Klemme, Iowa who suffered a spinal cord injury after an automobile accident in 1999, is now on the road to recovery after stem cell therapy in Cologne, Germany.
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