after six or eight patients, to resume only once, if there are signs of success.
“I’m surprised more people haven’t done this before,” says Dr. John McDonald, spinal cord injury chief at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and a former physician for the late Christopher Reeve.
He calls the method a logical next step from nerve-grafting for other injuries that takes advantage of primitive bladder reflexes at the spine’s base. “It’s very reasonable to take this approach with the bladder.”
“As a field, neuroscience is revisiting the adaptive capabilities of the spinal cord below the level of injury,” agreed Dr. John Martin, a neurobiologist at Columbia University Medical Center—but who cautioned patients to await the research. “Some of these ideas that look good haven’t come to fruition.”
There are some risks, Peters cautioned, including general anesthesia and wound infections. For children with spinal bifida who can walk, rerouting the thigh nerve causes a small risk of some foot weakness.
SHINGLES DRUG REDUCES SPINAL CORD INJURY PAIN
The drug pregabalin may help ease the pain of patients afflicted with spinal cord injury, Australian researchers report.
Currently, pregabalin is used to treat two types of nerve pain—diabetic nerve pain and pain after shingles.
The 12-week study, reported in the November 29 issue of Neurology, included 127 adult spinal cord injury patients with nerve pain. Half of them received pregabalin, the other half received a placebo.
At the end of the study, fewer than 16 percent of the patients taking pregabalin reported severe pain compared to 43 percent of the patients taking the placebo.
Patients taking the drug also had fewer sleep and anxiety problems than those taking the placebo. More than half (57 percent) of patients taking the drug said they felt better overall, compared to just 21 percent of those in the placebo group.
This study received funding from Pfizer, Inc.,
“The findings are promising, as spinal cord in jury pain is a condition which generally responds poorly to currently available treatments,” study author Phillip J. Siddall, of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, said in a prepared statement.
About 40 percent of spinal cord injury patients suffer nerve pain. There are about 450,000 people in the United States with spinal cord injuries, and about 11,000 people suffer a spinal cord injury each year, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Association.
PARALYZED CHILD’S
UNIQUE REHAB
Like most toddlers, Ryo Sakaguch likes to ride his tricycle. Ryo, 2, also still gets a kick out of crawling around, even though he’s paralyzed from the chest down.
In August, the toddler had been walking for little more than a year when he was injured in a car accident in his hometown of Fukuoka, Japan. Ryo was strapped in a car seat when the car he was riding in was hit head-on by a driver who had fallen asleep at the wheel. The impact caused him to double over, injuring his spinal cord at the T3 level. Doctors told Ryo he would never walk again.
Rehabilitation for spinal cord injury patients is limited in Japan. So, the family looked for more options and found the Project Walk Center in Carlsbad. A blog online talked about the unusual spinal injury rehabilitation available at the center. It’s one of only two places in the world offering such a treatment.
So, the Sakagush family flew to San Diego for two weeks of exercise-based rehab. According to Christel Mitrovich, staff at the center immediately put Ryo on a little tricycle. The idea was to make sure his legs got constant stimulation.
“Our job is to remind the brain the paralyzed parts are still there,” said Mitrovich. “So, we were going to focus on those paralyzed parts and get them out of the chair.”
His trainers put Ryo on a treadmill and asked him to crawl after toys or play with a ball. Because of his age, Ryo has a better chance that his spinal cord will grow and recover. He is already showing improvement and is scheduled to return home to Japan, where his parents hope to help create a similar rehab center there.
