ALL week, world records have been smashed by Paralympians. So what better time to announce another world first: stem cells have helped people paralysed from a broken spine to partially recover feeling.
Three people paralysed from the chest down have received injections of neural stem cells into their spinal cord. The cells, acquired from donated fetal brain tissue, were injected between four and eight months after injury, with a temporary course of immunosuppressants.
Before treatment, none of the three felt any sensation below their nipples. Six months after therapy, two of them had sensations between their chest and belly button. The third person has not felt any change.
“The fact we’ve seen responses to light touch, heat and electrical impulses so far down in two of the patients is very unexpected,” says Stephen Huhn of StemCells, the company in Newark, California, developing the treatment. “They’re really close to normal in those areas now in their sensitivity,” he adds.
Armin Curt of Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, where the three were treated, presented the results this week in London at the annual meeting of the International Spinal Cord Society.
There could be several reasons why stem cells improve sensitivity, says Huhn. They might restore myelin insulation in damaged nerves, improving communication to and from the brain. Or they could be enhancing the function of existing nerves, replacing them entirely or reducing the inflammation that hampers repair.
Huhn hopes that the results will revive the enthusiasm that evaporated following last year’s suspension of the only other trial to test stem cells for spinal injury. “It is the first time we’ve seen some beneficial effect, so we’re moving in the right direction,” he says.
“These data certainly indicate that stem cells may remediate some of the functional loss associated with spinal cord injury,” says George Bittner, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. However, Wagih El Masri of the Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries in Oswestry, UK, warns that 3 per cent of people with spinal injury can see spontaneous improvements. He says that trials in people injured more than six months previously will help to confirm the results.
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