New light of hope for Paralyzed people

Patients suffering from paralysis due to spinal cord injuries can hope of being able to walk again. A new study has demonstrated that mice can regain some ability to walk after spinal cord injuries.

The study conducted at University of California, Los Angeles has shown that in mice, brain and spinal cord start to coordinate partially at the cellular level which is required for walking. The various researches till now had shown that in order to walk again, the complete nerve fiber structure had to be re-grown and body is not able to do anything itself.

Spinal cord contains large number of nerve fibers which carry the signals and messages from brain to the back and other parts of the body, which help the person to walk. These fibers pass through neck and back.

In the experiments conducted, the long nerve fibers of the mice were partially damaged by different mechanisms and their response was observed. Researchers are really excited about the results as they have found that the mice were able to walk within eight to ten weeks of the damage although the recovery was not 100%.

"This is not the end of a story. This is the beginning of a story," said Dr. Michael Sofroniew, study’s lead author and a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The researchers think that this new mechanism needs to be more deeply observed and researched. But according to initial observations, scientists believe that the brain and spinal cord chose some alternative path to communicate in the absence of the long nerve fibers.

"If you have a big freeway going somewhere, then that's the fastest route to take. If that gets blocked and you can't get through, an alternative way might be simply to get off the freeway and use shorter interconnected side streets to get around," Sofroniew explained the theory in the lay man’s language.

In the experiments, the researchers only blocked half of the long nerve fibers on each side of the spinal cord but left its centre undisturbed. The centre is a very important part as it has a connected series of shorter nerve pathways that convey information over short distances up and down the spinal cord.

Spinal cord injuries have been the major cause of paralysis in the accident cases in which the part below the damage point of spinal cord is not able to receive signals from the brain and thus, paralysis occurs.

Till now, scientists have been unable to find any concrete solution to this common problem. The stem cell treatment also provides a potential solution, but the results of this study have developed a new hope of finding a solution soon.