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Pioneering bypass procedure may restore function after spinal injury
Medical researchers at Columbia University in New York have attempted to re-establish connections in the damaged spinal cords of rodents. The findings were presented in January 2008 at the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Program Symposium in New York.
An injury to the spine can permanently interrupt the traffic along the spinal cord, although the section of spinal cord below the injury is usually perfectly healthy and able to react to signals. The medical researchers at Columbia University aimed to bypass the damaged section of the spinal cord enabling signals from the brain to reach the still functioning portion of the cord below.
It is already known that nerves can form new connections to muscle tissue, so it followed that they may also be able to connect to spinal cord neurons below the injury.
John Martin, Professor of clinical neurobiology and behaviour explained that the experiments were carried out on rats with spinal injuries. Healthy motor nerves from above the injury which were branching away from the spinal cord and connecting to abdominal muscle were cut away from the muscle, passed through a hole drilled in the vertebra and stretched across the injured part of the spinal cord. A protein glue was then used to fix the nerve below the injury.
When the team inspected the nerves two weeks later they were found to have made connections with the motor nerves below the injury. By passing an electric current into the upper cord, the researchers found that the lower limbs of the rat twitched suggesting that motor signals were passing along the entire length of the spine.
There is still uncertainty whether the new signals passing down the spine would be able to control the lower limbs with precision. The next stage of the research program, therefore, will look into the animals ability to control these signals.
