Some diseases, disorders, or injuries can be frightening because their eventual result is death. However, there are other afflictions that are terrifying to contemplate because they represent not an end to life, but rather a drastic and unimaginable change in the way we live.
One such case is spinal cord injury. Depending on the site and severity of the injury, its effects can vary from discomfort to quadriplegia or paraplegia. The latter two represent a seismic shift in the way that an affected individual must go about their daily life. For years, science has sought a treatment for spinal cord injuries, and earlier this week a British-Polish medical team reported the first hints of possible success.
According to the Christopher and Diana Reeve Foundation, a nonprofit that supports neurorecovery research, approximately 1-in-50 Americans are currently living with some degree of paralysis. That translates to nearly 5.6 million people. Of those 5.6 million individuals, roughly 23 percent (about 1.3 million people) owe their paralysis to some form of spinal cord injury.
A person suffering paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury has damaged the nerve bundle housed in the spine. This damage prevents some or all of the nerve signals from passing in either direction, preventing movement and sensation from occurring as intended. The major difficulty of treating such an injury is that neural cells—generally speaking—do not replicate in adults. Thus, according to current conventional medicine, any break in the nerve will stay broken. The British-Polish team appears to have had the first real success at repairing spinal nerve damage.
According to an article on British news website The Independent, Bulgarian Darek Fidya had an eight millimeter gap transecting his spinal nerve. Fidya had been stabbed in the lower back, and as a result of his injury fully lost movement and sensation in both legs. Nineteen months after undergoing the research group’s experimental procedure, Fidya can walk with the aid of leg braces.
Fidya’s procedure built upon research conducted by Dr. Geoffery Raisman of the University College London Institute of Neurology. Raisman had been investigating a particular type of neural cell called an “olfactory ensheathing cell” (OEC). Prior to the procedure performed on Fidya, Raisman had attempted to use these OECs to repair nerve damage in rats. In one of his papers he described the unique properties of OECs that made them an attractive option.
According to Raisman’s 1997 paper, OECs work well for nerve repair as they are some of the only adult neural cells that buck the non-diving trend. Not only are these cells “continuously replaced” in adults, they also “grow into the olfactory bulb,” forming functional neural connections. This ability to divide in adults, and additionally to form new neural connections suggested great potential for therapeutic application.
The Independent reports that Raisman teamed up with Dr. Pawel Tabakow, a polish neurosurgeon, to implant the OECs into Fidya’s spine at the site of the severed nerve. Six months later, Fidya noticed pain from a bedsore on his hip; the first sensation he had felt below his waist since the stabbing. Now at 19 months post-operation, Fidya has recovered a great deal of sensation and even movement in his feet and legs, and continues to improve.
“When it starts coming back, you feel as if you start to live your life again, as if you are born again,” Fidya told the Independent.
Cautious optimism is always the reasonable response to a successful trial that has only one patient, and no one is yelling “cure,” yet. However, the initial results are very promising and certainly merit further investigation.
“I believe we have now opened the door to a treatment of spinal cord injury which will get patients out of wheelchairs,” Raisman told the Independent.
“Our goal,” he said, “is to develop this first procedure to a point where it can be rolled out as a worldwide general approach.”
