One of most wished for things by SCI sufferers is return of bladder control – it’s getting closer! When the spinal cord is injured, signals passing up from the bladder cannot tell the brain when the bladder is full. Going…
Category: Research (page 35)
Functional electrical stimulation FES shown to improve grasp in incomplete chronic SCI
Functional electrical stimulation (FES) therapy has been shown to be one of the most promising approaches for improving voluntary grasping function in individuals with subacute cervical spinal cord injury. Read more…
Treadmill step training promotes motor function after incomplete spinal cord injury
A large body of evidence shows that spinal circuits are significantly affected by training, and that intrinsic circuits that drive locomotor tasks are located in lumbosacral spinal segments in rats with complete spinal cord transection. However, after incomplete lesions, the…
Nanoparticles ease inflammation in mice with spinal cord injuries
In a spinal cord wound, immune cells often aggravate the injury by stirring up inflammation long after it’s needed, which hinders healing. Now a group of Italian researchers demonstrate that, in mice, they can quiet the cells responsible for chronic…
Drug may reduce chronic pain for spinal cord injuries
Researchers have discovered that a known neurotoxin may cause chronic pain in people who suffer from paralysis, and a drug that has been shown to remove the toxin might be used to treat the pain. The toxin, called acrolein, is…
Excellent discussion on electrical stimulation research in spinal cord injuries
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is both receiving praise and criticism for its handling of research related to the exciting new field of electric stimulation of the lower spine. These new techniques promise to give paralysed patients the…
Does the timing of surgery to treat traumatic spinal cord injury affect outcomes?
An multinational team of researchers performed a systematic review of the literature on spinal decompression surgery following traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Although debate continues over the effects of the timing of surgery, the authors found that “early” compared to…
Deep-brain stimulation may help restore function after SCI
A study published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine showed that in rats whose spinal cords were partially severed, the implantation of a pacemaker in the brain’s mesencephalic locomotor region – a control center for the initiation of…
Student earns research excellence award for work on poor gastrointestinal function following spinal cord injury
Penn State College of Medicine graduate student Emily Swartz has won the 2013 Michael Goldberger Research Excellence Award, presented by the National Neurotrauma Society. Swartz’s research is on gastrointestinal function following spinal cord injury. Her research suggests that the loss of normal…
StemCells Inc gets go ahead to open US sites for its Phase I/II clinical trial for chronic spinal cord injury
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved StemCell Inc’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for clinical testing of the Company’s proprietary HuCNS-SC® human neural stem cells as a treatment for spinal cord injury. As a first action under this IND,…