The Cochran Firm Legal Blog

When a person with a spinal cord injury is admitted to a hospital emergency room, there is no standard treatment. Certainly they are given care and testing in efforts to reduce pain and precisely locate the injury site. When motor nerves in the spinal cord are damaged, they are unable to carry messages to the body's muscles telling them to contract or relax. This causes paralysis in all areas below the injury site. Some patients are given steroids to possibly reduce paralysis, but most are not.

A research team at the University of Rochester Medical Center recently published results of a study they did on mice with spinal cord injuries. They were following up on their research of 2004 where they had studied a substance called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) which shows up quickly at the location of any spinal cord injury. It kills off healthy tissue, making the original injury more severe.

They found in 2004 that if they injected an oxidized ATP into the injured rats of their study, it blocked the destructive effect of ATP and the rats recovered their ability to walk. But this was not very useful for application to humans, as nobody would want to insert a needle into an injured spinal cord. That could possibly make the injury worse. Also, injecting ATP into the bloodstream can have serious side effects.

The researchers found in 2004 that the spinal cord contains an abundance of a molecule called P2X7, also called "the death receptor" because it allows ATP to destroy motor nerves. But they also knew that a compound called BBG (Brilliant Blue G) could cancel out the effects of P2X7.

Following Up With Gatorade Blue Color
Since BBG is very similar to a blue food dye approved by the FDA back in 1982 and used in Gatorade and M&Ms, the researchers felt encouraged to test its usefulness for spinal cord injuries.

The team's recent study tested BBG in mice with injured spinal cords and found that those injected with BBG recovered their ability to walk and those not injected remained paralyzed. The BBG did not entirely cure the injury, as the injected mice walked with a limp. But it did reduce the severity.

"Even a moderate improvement in functional performance of the patient is a big, big event for these patients," said Maiken Nedergaard, professor of Neurosurgery and director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. "They can control their bladder. If they can just take small steps instead of sitting in a wheelchair all the time, it's a tremendous benefit for these patients."

Time and future research will determine whether BBG might be effective for humans. It will need to be injected within eight hours of the injury and if that is done, it may greatly reduce the impairment caused by a person’s spinal cord injury.

If you or a loved one have sustained a spinal cord injury because of another's carelessness, please contact our personal injury lawyers today for a free consultation.

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