Imagine that you are driving home from work today when you are involved in a head on collision with an SUV. Life Lion flies you to the hospital. When you awake in the Emergency Department, you notice that you cannot feel your legs. Your doctor tells you that you may not able to walk. You also eventually realize that you cannot urinate or defecate voluntarily.

This is an all too familiar scenario for many people within the United States. Motor vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause of spinal cord injury (SCI). Approximately, 10,000 people in the U.S. will suffer a new SCI this year, and approximately 250,000 people in the U.S. are living with SCI. Continue Reading »

Collaborative study using Allen Spinal Cord Atlas finds previously overlooked cell type with implications for treating spinal cord injury and disease

SEATTLE, Sept. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — The Allen Institute for Brain Science announced today the discovery of a new class of cells in the spinal cord that act like neural stem cells, offering a fresh avenue in the search for therapies to treat spinal cord injury and disease. The published collaborative study, authored by scientists from the University of British Columbia, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University and titled “Adult Spinal Cord Radial Glia Display a Unique Progenitor Phenotype,” appears in the open access journal PLoS One. Continue Reading »

Rehabilitation facilities test robotic exoskeleton

David Leone left behind his familiar wheelchair, shifting himself onto a chair where a robotic external skeleton fitted to his 5-foot-11-inch frame sat waiting. Half a dozen people scurried around him, cinching Velcro straps tight around his legs and torso. He grabbed the handles of a walker, leaned forward, and hoisted himself to his feet.

Seven years after he last walked, Leone – paralyzed from the waist down – lifted his right foot and took a step, with the robotic technology moving his limbs.

The 37-year-old from Millis kept on going, racking up 284 steps in a 42-minute session this week at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. Continue Reading »

–Johns Hopkins researchers find ‘dramatic’ results in small preliminary study

Newswise — A small group of veterans with spinal cord injuries who underwent a four-day scuba- diving certification saw significant improvement in muscle movement, increased sensitivity to light touch and pinprick on the legs, and large reductions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, according to Johns Hopkins researchers.

The researchers, while calling the advances made over the course of a few days “dramatic,” caution that the results are preliminary, the study size small and the duration of the benefits are unknown. Still, they say, the findings suggest there may be a pathway for restoring neurological and psychological function in paraplegics that has been overlooked thus far. Continue Reading »

Here are 10 spine surgeons who have a clinical and research interest in spinal cord injury.  Continue Reading »

A recent study shows embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells are virtually identical. Human IPS cells were first produced in 2006 from mouse cells and in 2007 from human cells. Since then, scientists believed human IPS cells were equivalent to embryonic stem cells.

“In this study, we applied very cutting edge proteomic technologies to look at all the proteins or a very large percentage of them (in both types of cells) and we compared many cell lines, and what we found was that the protein levels are very similar in the two cell types,” said lead researcher Josh Coon, an associate professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as quoted by Medical News Today. Continue Reading »

Facing Disability is a web resource with more than 1,000 videos drawn from interviews of people with spinal cord injuries, their families, caregivers and experts.  Continue Reading »

Chuck Bittner is a quadriplegic stand-up comedian (the “can’t stand up” comedian) and avid video game player. On this site you’ll find his comedy routines as well as… Continue Reading »

Stephen Davies was lying on a paradisal beach in southern Thailand at 23 when all of a sudden, an overwhelming sense of work ethic washed over him.

For 10 months, Scottish-born Davies had been gallivanting around the globe, visiting cities in the United States, New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia. He had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Sussex University in England and was about to embark on yet another trip when the trajectory of his life changed course. Continue Reading »

Dan Eichelberger looks at his 9-month-old daughter, Alyssa, with nothing but adoration in his eyes. “Our perfect little angel,” he calls her.

A little angel who, just a few short years ago, seemed like an impossibility for Dan and his wife, Erin, both 27 of Marysville.

Dan, a computer programmer, became a paraplegic at age 16 after suffering a spinal cord injury in a car accident. He was driving when he took a hill to “catch some air.” He thinks the car blew tires upon landing, and when it flipped over he was thrown from the vehicle. Erin, now a stay-at-home mother, was his girlfriend at the time. Continue Reading »