Japanese cured two spinal cord disabilities

According to RCO News AgencyJapanese scientists have used treatment with the help of stem cells to help patients with paralyzed and incapable of standing and moving.

Disability and paralysis is one of the most destructive medical conditions that deprive people of movement and independence.

Spinal cord injuries create important challenges because the spinal cord is responsible for transmitting messages between the brain and the body and when it is damaged, it has a limited ability to heal.

Millions of people around the world are currently struggling with permanent paralysis. However, a pioneering clinical trial in Japan has shown a spark of hope.

Japanese scientists have shown that stem cell treatment can be a way to improve some of these patients.

Stem cell transplantation brings hope for people with disabilities

A research team led by Professor Hideyuki Okano at the University of Qiio has announced a major progress in the treatment of spinal cord injury.

The four patients who suffered severe spinal cord injury received the transplantation of nerve stem cells derived from induction stem cells (IPS).

One patient, a man previously classified as full paralysis, can now stand without help and has begun walking training.

Another patient re -moved his arms and legs, while the other two patients did not significantly improve.

These patients, who were all adult men, received the treatment within 14 to 28 days after injury.

Each person was injected two million neurological stem cells at the site of the injury to restore the lost nerve connections.

While the results are different, they show an important step forward in search of effective spinal cord injury treatments.

Promising initial results

The trial, which began in December 2021, included careful follow -up over a year.

One of the patients of the A score A on the scale of spinal cord injury was recovered to be a full paralysis to D, which allowed him to walk with or without help.

Another patient progressed from “A” to “C”, meaning he couldn’t stand alone, but he gave enough control to eat independently and use the wheelchair.

Despite these promising results, two of these four patients did not improve significantly.

However, there was no serious side effects that would provide confidence in the safety of this treatment.

“These results are a great positive outcome that is very exciting for the field,” says James St. John, a neuroscientist at the University of Griffith Australia.

However, he also warned that further research was needed to determine whether these advances were due to stem cell injections or were normal recovery.

The future of spinal cord treatment

Japanese scientists are now planning to expand their research and focus on increasing the number of neurological stem cells and focusing the treatment test on patients in the chronic phase of spinal cord injury.

This phase occurs months or years after the damage, when the nerve reconstruction is typically even more difficult.

“We were able to achieve good results in the first treatment of spinal cord injury in the world using IPS cells,” says Okano. There were difficult days that did not work with IPS cells, but the research achieved results that were worth the safety and estimation value.

While wider clinical tests are needed to determine the full potential of stem cell treatment, this study is an important step in finding a suitable treatment for paralysis and disability.

Given that more than 15 million people are living with spinal cord injuries worldwide, it is the possibility of recovering the lost movement for the affected people.

This pioneering study is published in the journal Nature.

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