Scientists move toward helping paralysis patients

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have figured out how mice can regain some ability to walk after spinal cord injuries, and hope this insight can lead to a new approach to restoring function in people paralyzed by similar damage.

The research, published on Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine, showed that the brain and spinal cord are able to reorganize functions after a spinal cord injury to restore communication at the cellular level needed for walking.

Mice given partial spinal cord injuries in the laboratory gradually were able over a period of about eight to 10 weeks to regain the ability to walk, although not as well as before the injury, according to the scientists.

After this partial spinal cord injury, the brain and spinal cord underwent a sort 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, the researchers said.

"This is not the end of a story. This is the beginning of a story," said Dr. Michael Sofroniew, a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles who led the research.

"We have identified what appears to be a previously unrecognized mechanism for recovery of function after these kinds of injuries. And we need to understand it better and learn how to exploit it better, through doing the right kind of rehab training and through figuring out ways to stimulate this kind of recovery," Sofroniew added in a telephone interview.

The spinal cord passes through the neck and back and contains nerves that transport messages between the brain and the rest of the body. A spinal cord injury -- from a car accident, for example -- can cause paralysis below the site of the injury. There is no cure for such paralysis, and many scientists have been frustrated by their failure to find one.

SPINAL CORD DAMAGE