April 10, 2008

New treatment for damaged spinal cords

Scientists at the North-western University may have a way to repair a damaged spinal cord. This revolutionary treatment is injected into the damaged area, and it will help to prevent scaring and is supposed to help the damaged nerves to grow back.

The treatment is a liquid that contains molecules which will assemble themselves into nano fibres; it is on these that the nerves will grow. It has been tested on mice, where the back legs are paralysed and after the treatment the use of the legs had returned.

Clearly this could help the thousands people who are injured in accidents and have to suffer for the rest of lives because these injuries are at the moment mostly untreatable.

Naturally there is always going to be some sort of fear about this sort of treatment, but when you consider the fact that the alternative is not being able to walk again, then many people would be interested in this.

Source [Technology Review]