Scientists have obtained severed the spinal cord of a rat to push after injection with certain immune cells. The findings, reported in the July Nature Medicine have raised hopes that the technique could help repair the brain and spinal cord trauma in people as well.
In mammals, peripheral nerves can often be repaired, but damage to the brain and spinal cord is usually permanent time. Many researchers have tried to coax these vital tissue healing themselves by treating them with growth factors or nerve helper cells that are thought to secrete restorative chemicals. These techniques have worked in rats, but has not been successfully transferred to humans
Michal Schwartz and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, decided to continue the seemed to be an index for the regeneration .: neurons that can repair themselves attract immune cells called macrophages to the site of injury, while nonrepairing cells suffer in silence. Following this observation, the group of Schwartz broke the spinal cords of 22 rats, which paralyzed their hind legs and then injected macrophages in the area surrounding the wound. The researchers monitored the recovery of rats over the next 19 weeks by recording their ability to move their hind legs. The rats not receiving macrophages taken only the slightest tremor in their legs, while most type of macrophage treated rats could move their legs in a sweeping motion and sometimes use them to support some of their weight. "It's a partial recovery but very spectacular," says Schwartz. His team also found that new nerve fibers had increased across the wound area.
"It is a very provocative finding," said Dalton Dietrich, a neuroscientist at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida. He noted that scientists thought that macrophages to the wound site may help damaged tissues, as they contribute to inflammation. "But this suggests that macrophages may be releasing substances that promote regeneration," he said. He warned that many other potential treatments for spinal cord showed the same promise at first, but failed to pan in other animal tests.
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