Glimmer of Hope for Spine-Injury Victims

It's just in rats for now, but scientists have induced spinal cord regrowth by taking tiny nerves from the rib cage, bathing them in a growth-inducing protein, and then grafting them into the area of the cut spinal cord. "By using tiny nerves from the rib cage as cables connecting the severed spinal cord, we were able to get some improvement in leg function," said Dr. Vernon Lin, a professor of physical medicine at the University of California at Irvine and director of the Spinal Cord Injury Group at the Long Beach Veterans Administration Medical Center.

Lin's study, published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, suggests that humans with spinal cord injuries could one day soon have improved treatments for their conditions. In the experiment, the growth inducer was a molecule known as aFGF, which is found naturally in most nerve cells.

The rats, all of which had severed spinal cords, were divided into three groups. The one that got both aFGF and nerve implants were able to move their hind legs and, at the end of the study, could support some of their weight on their legs. Rats that received just aFGF improved hardly at all. The same was true for those receiving only nerve cell grafts.

"Regeneration is considered very difficult, because the damaged area apparently inhibits growth of new nerve-cell connections," Lin said. "This study gets us closer to arriving at the right combination of growth factors, nerve cells and physical stimulation to overcome these inhibitions and successfully treat spinal cord injury."

Insight Into Faster Healing of Seniors' Broken Bones

As people age, bone healing becomes slower and poorer. But a new drug may provide hope of restoring to seniors the rapid bone healing of youth, according to a recent study.

The research, which is presented in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, offers hope to the roughly 560,000 Americans a year who suffer bone fractures that heal slowly or incompletely, leaving many in wheelchairs, unable to walk or live on their own. Even though the study is just on mice, it’s relevant to humans because of the similarity between a key human and mouse bone-building gene, and because the study mice, specially engineered by the National Institute on Aging, led to several important insights into aging that have been confirmed in humans.

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Metal-Particle Inflammation Causes Joint-Implant Failure

The very joint implants that bring pain relief and restore freedom of motion to patients’ extremities can be their own undoing, setting off a metal-induced immunological defense mechanism that causes the implants to loosen and fail, according to a recent study.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and to be published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, was conducted by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. It won an award for scientific merit from the Orthopaedic Research Society.

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A Natural Solution to Osteoarthritis Knee Pain

As a result of intensive research, treatments for osteoarthritis or degenerative joint disease continue to emerge. Osteoarthritis is a common ailment that affects millions of Americans, with the knee being the most likely joint to be afflicted. As the disease progresses, the cartilage that normally cushions and lubricates the joint begins to degenerate. This leads to joint friction, inflammation, pain, stiffness, and eventually deformity. (Read more)