The Spinal Cord and Spinal Cord Injury

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INTRODUCTION

The spinal cord is a major channel in the body where motor and sensory information travels from the brain to the body. It has white matter that surrounds a central gray matter. The gray matter is where most of the neuronal cells are located. Injury to the spinal cord will affect the conduction of information across any part of the spinal cord where the damage is located (Maynard et al., 1997). This will often result in permanent disability of a certain muscle or region of the body (Meletis et al., 2008) and a loss of tissue where the damage is located (Peng et al., 2009). As of now, there is no treatment for spinal cord injury expect for steroids. All steroids can do is provide protect of the spinal cord from secondary injury for specific patients (Peng et al., 2009).

Two treatment types are being studied for spinal cord injury: injection of an antagonist of the ATP-sensitive receptor P2X7 and transplantation of human embryonic stem cell derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. In the spinal cord, ATP can act as an excitatory neurotransmitter (Domercq et al,. 2009). ATP is released in excess for six hours after the initial damage. Most tissue damage happens after the main injury occurs, so finding a treatment that will slow the secondary injury down is a main interest for clinical treatment studies. Injecting a P2X7 antagonist that is sensitive to ATP into the region of the spinal cord that has been damaged has been found to slow down secondary injury (Peng et al., 2009). Also, demyelination of neurons can be found after spinal cord injury. Transplanting human embryonic stem cell derived oligodendrocyte progenitor cells into the damaged tissue has shown to help with remyelinating the neurons. Th...

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Meletis, K., Barnabe-Heider, F., Carlen, M., Evergren, E., Tomilin, N., Shupliakov, O., & Frisen, J. (2008). Spinal Cord Injury Reveals Multilineage Differentiation of Ependymal Cells: PLoS Biology, 6, 1494 – 1507.

Peng, W., Cotrina, M.L., Han, X., Yu, H., Bekar, L., Blum, L., ….. Nedergaard, M. (2009). Systemic Administration of an Antagonist of the ATP-Sensitive Receptor P2X7 Improves Recovery after Spinal Cord Injury: PNAS, 106, 12489 – 12493.

Sharp, J., Frame, J., Siegenthaler, M., Nistor, G., Keirstead, H.S. (2010). Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cell Transplants Improve Recovery after Cervical Spinal Cord Injury: Stem Cells, 28, 152 – 163.

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