Spinal compression fractures are an often overlooked, but common cause of back pain. These small fractures in the bones that form your spine are frequently caused by osteoporosis. Fortunately, spinal compression fractures can be treated with pain medicine and bed rest. Some patients may wear a...
Human foetal stem cell grafts improve both motor and sensory functions in rats suffering from a spinal cord injury, according to research published this week in BioMed Central's open access journal Stem Cell Research and Therapy. This cell replacement therapy also improves the structural...
By using noninvasive stimulation, researchers were able to temporarily improve the ability of people with spinal cord injuries to use their hands. The findings, reported in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, hold promise in treating thousands of people in the United States alone who are...
Spinal injuries are among the most disabling conditions affecting wounded members of the U.S. military. Yet until recently, the nature of those injuries had not been adequately explored. In a new study recently published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), a team of orthopaedic...
Two studies published in a recent issue of Cell Medicine [2(2)] report on the therapeutic efficacy of stem cell transplantation in animal models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal cord injury (SCI). Cell Medicine is freely available on-line...
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Georgia Tech researchers have created a wireless, musical glove that may improve sensation and motor skills for people with paralyzing spinal cord injury (SCI). The gadget was successfully used by individuals with limited feeling or movement in their hands due to tetraplegia. These individuals...
Yona Goldshmit, Ph.D., is a former physical therapist who worked in rehabilitation centers with spinal cord injury patients for many years before deciding to switch her focus to the underlying science. "After a few years in the clinic, I realized that we don't really know what's going on," she...
Teasing out the exact type or types of dementia someone suffers from is no easy task; neurodegenerative brain diseases share common pathology and often co-occur. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania are continuing efforts to differentiate diseases...
I recently had a bi-level cervical spinal fusion and while I do not smoke I was taken by how critical being nicotine free during recovery is to allow for the fusion to take. Everything that I found (no surprise here) said basically quit smoking and never smoke or touch another nicotine product...
On Wednesday, US researchers announced they are testing a new drug in dogs that has already proven effective in mice. The drug is designed to substantially reduce the hind limb paralysis that follows certain spinal cord injuries. There are currently no therapies that can do this. The...
For specific causes of back pain, spinal surgery provides a good value over long-term follow-up, compared to nonsurgical treatment, concludes a report in the November 15th issue of Spine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. In patients...
New research from the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation may help explain why people with spinal cord injury (SCI) have a higher risk of developing heart disease. Damage to the autonomic nervous system is a key predictor of cardiovascular risk, researcher...
Lesions to the brain or spinal cord rarely heal fully, which leads to permanent functional impairment. After injury to the central nervous system (CNS), neurons are lost and largely replaced by a scar often referred to as the glial scar based on its abundance of supporting glial cells. Although...
I work as a dietary aid in a nursing home. Close to a month ago, as I was finishing up washing dishes when I suddenly got this excruciating knot between my left shoulder blade and my spinal cord - it didn't really hurt it just felt like it was knotting up, I ignored it and continued with my...
Talks on major advances in radiosurgery and radiotherapy for treating cancer of the brain, breast, and spine, captured the attention of more than 800 clinicians at Varian Medical Systems' 2010 Annual Users Meeting, held recently in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Society for...
Frank Reynolds's story is obviously a complex, multi-year affair that involved years of research, but for the attention-span deprived, a summary: He was paralyzed. He researched neuroscience. Created a company. Tested a new surgical procedure on himself. He walked again. More »
CareFusion (NYSE: CFN), a leading, global medical device company, announced the national commercial launch of the AVAmax® Vertebral Balloon, a minimally invasive device for use during kyphoplasty, a procedure for treating spinal compression fractures. The AVAmax Vertebral Balloon represents...
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation a $5.4 million grant to support the expansion of translational research to find treatments for military men and women with spinal cord injuries. The DoD gave the two-year, peer-reviewed grant to the...
One of the most common causes of disability in young adults is spinal cord injury. Currently, there is no proven reparative treatment. Hope that neural stem cells (NSCs) might be of benefit to individuals with severe spinal cord injury has now been provided by the work of a team of researchers...
The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has lifted a clinical hold on Geron's Investigational New Drug (IND) application - the Phase I clinical trial of GRNOPC1 in patients with acute spinal cord injury may now go ahead. GRNOPC1 is the first ever clinical trial of a human embryonic stem cell...