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According to the World Health Organisation, around 15 million people worldwide are living with spinal cord injuries.
These injuries can be debilitating and disabling, with significant risk of potentially life-threatening secondary conditions resulting from mostly preventable injuries.
That’s because some of the most common causes of spinal cord injuries are road traffic accidents, as well as other bodily trauma like falls and violent attacks.
In the aftermath of sustaining these life-changing injuries, the prognosis is often concerning, with only a low level – around 10-12% – of spinal cord injury victims recovering their motor functions through rehabilitation.
But thanks to pioneering research from doctors at Keio University in Japan, this could all be about to change.
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Through a long-term research program led by Professor Hideyuki Okano, the team have developed a stem-cell treatment for spinal cord injuries, using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – adult cells that have been manipulated to resemble embryonic ones.
With the transplantation of these iPS cells into four patients who had recently sustained spinal cord injuries, Okano and his team claim to have a fifty percent success rate of patients regaining motor function with the treatment and rehabilitation – considerably more than the numbers regaining it from rehabilitation alone.
As Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun reports, the trial took place over a year, during which time patients who had injured their spinal cords within the last two to four weeks were injected with the cells at the site of injury.
After a year of observations, it was concluded that the patients had suffered no adverse effects from the treatment, and the fifty percent success rate even included one of the patients regaining the ability to stand with the use of a support mechanism.
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Though the news that one patient regained the ability to stand – and is now learning how to walk once more – is promising, it should be noted that this was an extremely small trial.
Next, the treatment will be tested more widely, to ensure that the cells are indeed safe and effective before more widespread treatment can be rolled out.
However, with such a high number of people living with spinal cord injuries across the world, pioneering research like this – with impressive results at its early trial phase – can only be a good thing.
It will give hope to spinal cord injury sufferers around the world.
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