new methods that speed up recovery after nerve injury
Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2012 2:14 pm
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/02 ... red-nerves
He says a damaged nerve is a bit like a bridge with a missing section. "What you'd want to do is put some sort of patch in there and rejoin the two halves," he says.
Bittner worked with Thayer and other researchers to come up with a multistep process that appears to do just that.
First they expose the severed nerve. Then they use chemical compounds to reverse a process that normally seals the nerve ends shut. At that point, they draw the two nerve ends together with tiny sutures and apply more chemicals that cause the nerve ends to fuse. This work is reported in a study published online in the Journal of Neuroscience Research.
The technique can be done entirely with chemicals that are already approved for use in people, Bittner says. And it produced very good results in a study of rats that had their sciatic nerve cut, he says.
That nerve controls the entire leg, paw and toes, and without it rats are badly disabled. But rats treated with his technique got better as soon as they began to recover from the surgery, Bittner says.
"You'd be hard-pressed to know which rats after several weeks had their entire sciatic nerve cut and which had a sham operation, never had it cut," he says
Bittner isn't the only one working on this technique. Researchers at Harvard are also involved. And Thayer at Vanderbilt hopes to try the approach on people within a year.
Meanwhile, researchers at Purdue University have reported success fusing nerves a different way — using a substance made from the shells of crustaceans.
He says a damaged nerve is a bit like a bridge with a missing section. "What you'd want to do is put some sort of patch in there and rejoin the two halves," he says.
Bittner worked with Thayer and other researchers to come up with a multistep process that appears to do just that.
First they expose the severed nerve. Then they use chemical compounds to reverse a process that normally seals the nerve ends shut. At that point, they draw the two nerve ends together with tiny sutures and apply more chemicals that cause the nerve ends to fuse. This work is reported in a study published online in the Journal of Neuroscience Research.
The technique can be done entirely with chemicals that are already approved for use in people, Bittner says. And it produced very good results in a study of rats that had their sciatic nerve cut, he says.
That nerve controls the entire leg, paw and toes, and without it rats are badly disabled. But rats treated with his technique got better as soon as they began to recover from the surgery, Bittner says.
"You'd be hard-pressed to know which rats after several weeks had their entire sciatic nerve cut and which had a sham operation, never had it cut," he says
Bittner isn't the only one working on this technique. Researchers at Harvard are also involved. And Thayer at Vanderbilt hopes to try the approach on people within a year.
Meanwhile, researchers at Purdue University have reported success fusing nerves a different way — using a substance made from the shells of crustaceans.