Primates can 'repair own spine'RSS Feed

Primates have the ability to internally repair their spinal cord after traumatic spinal injury, according to new research.

This innate ability to repair spinal cord injury could be shared by all primates, including humans, found the study by scientists at the University of California and San Diego and VA Medical Center San Diego.

If this facility for recovery was expanded, treatment for spinal cord injury could be revolutionised, with humans potentially able to regrow injured spinal nerves.

When spinal cord hemisections were administered to adult rhesus monkeys, a spontaneous plasticity of corticospinal projections was seen, with 60 per cent of connections regrowing within 24 weeks.

It is due to the fact that rats - on which these experiments are ordinarily conducted - do not posses this ability that the phenomenon has only just been discovered.

In related news, doctors have implanted a drug pump in a British girl with cerebral palsy who is suffering spinal injury.

This administers muscle relaxant drugs into the spinal fluid, greatly improving the patient's quality of life.

News brought to you by Serious Law specialists in spinal injury

Posted by Paul Breen
 

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