Search Results for: stem cell therapy spinal cord injury

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

31-Jul-2014

Contact: Meng Zhao eic@nrren.org 86-138-049-98773 Neural Regeneration Research

Spinal cord injury (SCI) currently ranks second after mental retardation among neurological disorders in terms of cost to society. Pain is a debilitating consequence of SCI related to the nature of the lesion, neurological structures damaged, and secondary pathophysiological changes of surviving tissues1. Approximately two-thirds of persons who have sustained SCI experience clinically significant pain after injury, of whom one-third have severe pain2, 3. Post-SCI pain can increase with time and is often refractory to conventional treatment approaches4. Over the past decade, clinical studies have shown that post-SCI pain interferes with rehabilitation, daily activities, and quality of life and may substantially influence mood, leading to depression and even suicide4-7.Chronic neuropathic pain following SCI is divided into three types: at-level pain (pain within the body segments innervated by spinal cord segments at the level of the injury), below-level pain (pain within body segments caudal to the level at which the spinal cord was injured), and above-level pain (pain within body segments rostral to the level at which the spinal cord was injured)8. The mechanisms underlying SCI-induced chronic neuropathic pain are not well understood. Aberrant central sprouting of nociceptive fibers has been commonly proposed as a mechanism of SCI pain and is associated with mechanical allodynia induced by SCI9-11. Demyelination (loss of myelin) and dysmyelination (abnormal myelination) induced by oligodendrocyte injury and death are important contributors to SCI-associated behavioral deficits, including pain12-16. For instance, SCI-induced dysmyelination is involved in the aberrant sprouting of nociceptive fibers and causes SCI pain behaviors. Thus, remyelination of demyelinated/dysmyelinated axonsin the injured spinal cord could be an important repair therapy for SCI and one of the key elements for functional recovery and aberrant sprouting prevention after SCI, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 5, 2014).

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Article: " Effect of microenvironment modulation on stem cell therapy for spinal cord injury pain" by Sufang Liu1, 2, Changsheng Li1, 2, Ying Xing2, 3, Feng Tao1 (1 Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA; 2 Basic Medical College, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China; 3 Basic Medical College, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China)

Liu SF, Li CS, Xing Y, Tao F. Effect of microenvironment modulation on stem cell therapy for spinal cord injury pain. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(5):458-459.

Contact: Meng Zhao eic@nrren.org 86-138-049-98773 Neural Regeneration Research http://www.nrronline.org/

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Effect of microenvironment modulation on stem cell therapy for spinal cord injury pain

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

17-Dec-2013

Contact: Press Office biologypress@plos.org Public Library of Science

A systematic survey of the scientific literature shows that stem cell therapy can have a statistically significant impact on animal models of spinal cord injury, and points the way for future studies.

Spinal cord injuries are mostly caused by trauma, often incurred in road traffic or sporting incidents, often with devastating and irreversible consequences, and unfortunately having a relatively high prevalence (250,000 patients in the USA; 80% of cases are male). High-profile campaigners like the late actor Christopher Reeve, himself a victim of sports-related spinal cord injury, have placed high hopes in stem cell transplantation. But how likely is it to work?

This question is addressed in a paper published 17th December in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Ana Antonic, David Howells and colleagues from the Florey Institute and the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Malcolm MacLeod and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Stem cell therapy aims to use special regenerative cells (stem cells) to repopulate areas of damage that result from spinal cord injuries, with the hope of improving the ability to move ("motor outcomes") and to feel ("sensory outcomes") beyond the site of the injury. Many studies have been performed that involve animal models of spinal cord injury (mostly rats and mice), but these are limited in scale by financial, practical and ethical considerations. These limitations hamper each individual study's statistical power to detect the true effects of the stem cell implantation.

This new study gets round this problem by conducting a "meta-analysis" a sophisticated and systematic cumulative statistical reappraisal of many previous laboratory experiments. In this case the authors assessed 156 published studies that examined the effects of stem cell treatment for experimental spinal injury in a total of about 6000 animals.

Overall, they found that stem cell treatment results in an average improvement of about 25% over the post-injury performance in both sensory and motor outcomes, though the results can vary widely between animals. For sensory outcomes the degree of improvement tended to increase with the number of cells introduced scientists are often reassured by this sort of "dose response", as it suggests a real underlying biologically plausible effect.

The authors went on to use their analysis to explore the effects of bias (whether the experimenters knew which animals were treated and which untreated), the way that the stem cells were cultured, the way that the spinal injury was generated, and the way that outcomes were measured. In each case, important lessons were learned that should help inform and refine the design of future animal studies. The meta-analysis also revealed some surprises that should provoke further investigation there was little evidence of any beneficial sensory effects in female animals, for example, and it didn't seem to matter whether immunosuppressive drugs were administered or not.

Read more:
Will stem cell therapy help cure spinal cord injury?