People paralyzed because of spinal cord injuries may glean some hope from new research carried out in mice.
Scientists in the United States say they have worked out a way for mice to regain some of their ability to walk following damage to their spinal cord and they believe this discovery may lead to a new approach to restoring function in people paralyzed by similar damage.
According to the researchers they have shown that the brain and spinal cord are able to reorganize functions after a spinal cord injury and restore communication at the cellular level needed for walking.
The scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that mice which were given partial spinal cord injuries in the laboratory were gradually, over a period of about 8 to 10 weeks, able to regain some of the ability to walk.
The researchers say following the partial spinal cord injury, the brain and spinal cord underwent a type of spontaneous rewiring to control walking even in the absence of the long, direct nerve highways that normally connect the brain to the walking center in the lower spinal cord.
Dr. Michael Sofroniew, a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine UCLA ,who led the research, says they have identified what appears to be a previously unrecognized mechanism for recovery of function after such injuries.
Dr. Sofroniew says this process needs to be better understood in order that it can be exploited.
He suggests this could be done by the right kind of rehabilitation therapy and by working out ways to stimulate such recovery.
The spinal cord which passes through the neck and back contains nerves that transport messages between the brain and the rest of the body and a spinal cord injury can obstruct the pathways the brain uses to transit messages to the nerve cells that control walking.
A spinal cord injury can cause paralysis below the site of the injury for which there is no cure; patients usually experience greater paralysis when injury strikes higher in the spinal column.
Many experts believe the only way someone with such an injury can walk again is for the nerve highways linking the brain and base of the spinal cord to regrow and the failure to come up with a cure has frustrated many scientists.