THE DERBY CITY NSCIA NEWSLETTER

Message From the President

Dear Members & Friends-

Our speaker this month will be Pam Person. She is a nurse specializing in wound care. She will be discussing new methods to treat pressure ulcers and additionally will give helpful information in how to prevent pressure ulcers. Skin care is an important factor for all injuries ; new or old. A skin break down can keep you out of commission for weeks, months, or even over a year. So please come and listen to what is sure to be a very informative discussion.

June’s meeting will be held at Kingfish Restaurant on River Road and Zorn at 6:00 p.m.

- David Allgood

AN OUTLINE OF THE SURGERY
DISCUSSED IN THE COLUMN ON THE RIGHT(FROM A DIAGRAM INCLUDED WITH THE ARTICLE)

The following article is an excerpt of the 2nd part of an article from Paraplegia News, May 2003

WITHIN THE REALM
By Lawrence Johnston, Ph.D. and Sara Sa

Part I of this article discussed olfactory tissue’s remarkable regenerative potential and the efforts of various scientists throughout the world to harness this potential by transplanting it into the injury site of people with chronic spinal-cord injury (SCI). Part 2 discusses the pioneering work of one of these scientists, Portugal’s Carlos Lima.

Olfactory tissue, which covers about one inch of the upper nasal cavity, contains many cells with regenerative potential, including renewable neurons, progenitor stem cells, and remyelinating olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs). Olfactory neurons are comfortable residing in the central and Peripheral nervous systems; because they are the body’s only surface neurons, they readily regenerate from a pool of progenitor stem cells. In addition, OECs can produce insulating Myelin sheaths around growing spinal-cord axons, secrete various neuonal growth factors, and produce structural and matrix macromolecules that lay the tracks for axonal elongation.
Carlos Lima is a 48-year-old neuropathologist at Lisbon’s Egaz Moniz Hospital. Lima obtained medical

(Continued On Page Two)