Ground Breaking Paralysis Research Gives Hope to Many
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/bsd
By Adam Tufts
The daily lives of most people are simply a conglomerate of movements. In fact, most actions can be simplified to a few coordinated pushes and pulls from specific muscles in the human body. Of course, these muscles don’t magically activate, rather they react according to impulses sent from the control center of the body: the brain. Moreover, this communication is efficient, and transportation of information from the brain to the rest of the body typically takes fractions of a second. However, this efficiency can be compromised, especially when the body’s primary highway of information, the spinal cord, is damaged.
The spinal cord is an essential component of the nervous system, and it facilitates the movement of electrical pulses being transmitted from the brain. For this reason, medical professionals have long understood the severity of spinal cord injuries: the spine is simply too important to malfunction. To combat the adverse effects of spinal trauma, German biochemists from the Ruhr-University Bochum researched the remedial properties of a specific protein, coined “hyper-interleukin-6.” Their findings give hope to paralysis researchers who predict the development of treatment options in the, albeit distant, future.
However, before the conclusions from the biochemists’ studies can be discussed, the fundamental components of the nervous system should be understood.
“The basic functional cell of the nervous system is called a neuron,” said Monica Moya, a bioengineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. “An axon is a long skinny part of a neuron that carries information really far and really fast.”
These neurons are responsible for the aforementioned transmission of information between the brain and the body, particularly via the spinal cord. When the spine is damaged the axons, and consequently neurons, may be rendered incapable of fulfilling their purpose.
“If a motor neuron, a neuron that tells muscles what to do… is damaged then that signal will not be able to go through,” said anatomy and biology teacher Katherine Papastephanou.
Therefore, when the spine is damaged the motor neurons may be inhibited from stimulating certain muscles, resulting in either partial or complete paralysis. Put differently, any given impulse’s path from the brain to a given muscle can be disrupted if the spine is in any way impaired. Unfortunately, recovery from a spinal cord injury is typically impossible, leaving paralyzed individuals permanently disabled.
“Nerve cells are highly differentiated making it very difficult for them to regenerate,” said veterinarian Dr. Lesia Machicao, a small animal practitioner at VCA Old River Animal Hospital. “That’s why it is so difficult to reverse nervous system injuries.”
The study conducted at Ruhr-University Bochum further explored this medical phenomenon, investigating whether motor neurons could be forced to regenerate under certain conditions. In one of their experiments they introduced a virus to paralyzed mice’s brains, so that a specific protein, hyper-interleukin-6, might be produced, in a process known as gene therapy.
“Viruses take genetic material and insert it into cells,” said Moya. “Genetic material is essentially a blueprint, so when the cells receive these blueprints they make a certain kind of protein, in this case, hyper-interleukin-6.”
The new proteins happened to influence neighboring motor neurons to regenerate their previously damaged axonal fibers. With the axonal fibers intact the scientists noticed that the mice began walking once again.
“Thus, gene therapy treatment of only a few nerve cells stimulated the axonal regeneration of various nerve cells in the brain and several motor tracts in the spinal cord simultaneously,” said professor Dietmar Fischer at Ruhr-University Bochum, in a recent press release. He added: “ultimately, this enabled the previously paralyzed animals that received this treatment to start walking after two to three weeks. This came as a great surprise to us at the beginning, as it had never been shown to be possible before after full paraplegia.”
Of course, the implications of these findings in human medicine are still unclear, and will likely remain as such for years to come.
“It takes a long time to replicate studies and test methods in different organisms… Even though humans and mice have a lot in common, insofar as they are both mammals, we are not exactly the same,” said Papastephanou. “We would need to repeat these tests in organisms that are more similar to humans to know if it would have a similar effect in human anatomy.”
While the findings of this study may seem intangible and distant, it is important to remember the significance of this groundbreaking discovery.
“It would be marvelous to find some way to cure paralysis and make animals and people walk again,” said Machicao. “It would be a significant breakthrough in modern medicine.”
