Neuroscientists Hope To Get People Walking Again

October 3, 2009

Neuroscience researchers at the University of Louisville will be the only team

collaborating with an international group of scientists that last week announced

they had enabled paralyzed rats to walk while supporting their own weight.

Dr. Harkema, the University of Louisville's Owsley Brown Frazier Chair in

Neurological Rehabilitation, rehabilitation director at the university's

Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center (KSCIRC) and the director of

research at Frazier Rehab Institute, is evaluating how to translate into humans

the success accomplished in the animals.

" We have been collaborating with this particular group of researchers for a

number of years, " Harkema said. " The results they have shown are very exciting

and we look forward to determining how to take their animal findings and move it

into applications for humans. "

The research team at UCLA found that a combination of drugs, electrical

stimulation and regular exercise was enough to allow the rats to walk. One of

the key things demonstrated is that regeneration of severed nerve fibers is not

required for the animals to learn to walk again.

" Spine cells in mammals generate a current that helps make muscles and parts of

the body move. If we can find ways to harness that current and stimulate

appropriate areas with electrical stimulation to enhance that current, we may be

able to help people who have complete spinal cord injuries stand and walk on

their own, " Harkema said.

Statistics from the University of Alabama National Spinal Cord Injury

Statistical Center show that approximately 250,000 Americans are spinal cord

injured. Fifty two percent of spinal cord injured individuals are considered

paraplegic and 47% quadriplegic. Approximately 11,000 new injuries occur each

year. Fifty-six percent of injuries occur between the ages of 16 and 30. The

average age of a spinal cord injured person is 31.

Recommended Posts