Two studies presented at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (13–17 October 2012; New Orleans, LA), reflect current advances in understanding and treating spinal cord injury (SCI). More than a quarter of a million people in the US live with SCIs, which can be debilitating because they limit movement or feeling, cause pain and lead to chronic health problems.

“While the damage of SCI can appear to be immediate and dramatic, the biological events that lead to extensive nerve and tissue damage are complex, and injuries evolve over time,” said moderator Jacqueline Bresnahan (University of California, San Francisco), an expert on traumatic SCI, in a press conference. “Today researchers are finding ways to intervene in the cascade of molecular changes that follow SCI [and] finding new ways to treat and rehabilitate patients,” she continued.

Brian Noga (University of Miami, FL) reported on the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to restore walking ability in cases of partial SCI. DBS is already used to treat other movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, but has not been previously applied to treating SCI. In Noga's study, rats with partial SCIs received stimulation from an electrode implanted in the mesencephalic locomotor region of the brain. This DBS activated descending nerve fibers, improving both the speed and the distance that injured rats were able to travel. Some rats that had not been able to step forward after injury began walking again during the 10-week study. These results indicate that DBS can reactivate nerve pathways that are intact but dysfunctional after partial SCI and may be useful for improving walking in people with chronic SCI.

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Yang Teng (Harvard Medical School and Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA) reported success using a different strategy to improve walking and reduce damage after SCI in rats: inhalation of carbon monoxide (CO). Rats were exposed to one of three doses of CO for 1 hour per day for 12 days. Those exposed to the highest dose of CO (500 ppm) showed the greatest improvements in walking ability and in recovery from SCI as measured by nerve lesion volume and survival of motor neurons. These neuroprotective effects of CO exposure resulted from the interference of CO with the body's inflammatory response to SCI. Teng and colleagues suggest that CO inhalation may represent a new neuroprotective treatment for traumatic SCI.