Kinnelon couple founds clinic to help spinal-cord injury victims

When Darren Templeton walks again, his family is going to be right behind him.

His parents, Cynthia and John Templeton of Kinnelon, founded Push to Walk, a nonprofit spinal-cord injury exercise and recovery center, almost three years ago, to help him recover. Darren Templeton fractured his C-5 vertebrae diving off a boat into the bay at Long Beach Island on July 23, 2004. Continue Reading »

Center in Southfield is building a niche

With clients coming from as far away as Switzerland, and others traveling two to four hours for workouts, Erica Nader’s Southfield rehabilitation company is building a niche as one of the few businesses of its kind in the nation that specializes in more aggressive rehabilitation therapies for people with spinal cord injuries.

Walk the Line to SCI Recovery, started in 2007, offers services not widely available in the United States or abroad that encourage weight-bearing activities, including standing upright and walking to improve the health of people with spinal cord injuries. Continue Reading »

Despite a spinal cord injury that rendered her a quadriplegic, Melissa Nunn’s determination and optimism are an inspiration to everyone around her.

Melissa Nunn was a redheaded firecracker of a softball player who attacked the sport’s two most challenging positions – pitcher and third base – for William Tennent High School.

And she did it with the fervor of a weathered veteran, not a wavering 15-year-old rookie. Continue Reading »

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Injecting tiny polymer spheres into rats right after a spinal cord injury helped the animals recover movement and prevented secondary nerve damage that often follows such injuries, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

The experimental treatment uses spheres called copolymer micelles that fuse with injured nerve fibers and prevent inflammation from doing more damage to surrounding nerves. Continue Reading »

Neuroscientists cluster in La Jolla

Any chance of recovery from a spinal-cord injury, however small, depends on swift treatment. Without that, damaged nerve cells wither, some die and the body becomes paralyzed.

But perhaps the paralysis isn’t permanent. Neuroscientists at the University of California San Diego have for the first time successfully regrown axons – fibers that connect nerve cells and conduct their essential communications – in the damaged spinal cords of rats with untreated injuries that are six weeks to more than a year old. Continue Reading »

Weill Cornell Medical College team receives $2.5 million New York State research grant to undertake laboratory study

Substances naturally produced by the human body may one day help prevent paralysis following a spinal cord injury, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College. A recent $2.5 million grant from the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Board will fund their research investigating this possibility. Continue Reading »

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Afghan insurgents are using roadside bombs powerful enough to throw the military’s new 14-ton, blast-resistant vehicles into the air, increasing broken-back injuries among U.S. troops.

Doctors at the U.S. military hospital here say more than 100 U.S. servicemembers have suffered crushed or damaged spinal columns from being thrown around inside armored Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles in the last five months. Continue Reading »

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More than 10,000 people suffer a spinal cord injury in the U.S. each year, many of whom never recover the ability to walk. With new funding to study the neural networks for locomotion in rodents, Ronald Harris-Warrick, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior, hopes to find ways for spinal cord injury victims to get back on their feet.

With a grant of almost $700,000 from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), Harris-Warrick will continue research that had previously been funded by New York state and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Continue Reading »