New Treatment for Chronic Pain after Spinal Cord Injury

New Rochelle, NY – Chronic neuropathic pain following a spinal cord injury is common and very difficult to treat, but a new therapeutic strategy requiring a one-time injection into the spinal column has potential to improve patient outcomes.

This cutting-edge pain management strategy is described in an article published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online, along with a related article on pain following spinal cord injury. Continue Reading »

Less Pain With New Treatment For Spinal Cord Injuries

Rutgers researchers have developed an innovative new treatment that could help minimize nerve damage in spinal cord injuries, promote tissue healing and minimize pain.

After a spinal cord injury there is an increased production of a protein (RhoA) that blocks regeneration of nerve cells that carry signals along the spinal cord and prevents the injured tissue from healing. Continue Reading »

Seeking Spinal Cord Injury Patients for Research Using Noninvasive Brain Stimulation

Participants must be 18-64 years of age with no history of schizophrenia, or alcohol or drug abuse within the last year.
This study uses a technique called transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). Testing will involve brain stimulation for a total of 16 visits. Research is being conducted at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, located in Boston, MA. You will be compensated $25 per visit for your participation, and parking will be reimbursed. Continue Reading »

Pot for Pain? This Is Your Law on Drugs

Canada’s medical marijuana regime in shambles, say critics.

Imagine that you have a painful, debilitating medical or psychological condition. You and your doctor agree that a certain medicine is the best available treatment. Now imagine that, rather than taking your doctor’s note into the nearest drug store and waiting a few minutes while the pleasant young person behind the counter fills your prescription, you have to send off forms to Ottawa and wait as long as eight to 10 months before you can get your medicine. In the meantime, if you find a way to access what you need in a less formal way, you live every day with the prospect of armed men in body armor breaking into your home and arresting you. Continue Reading »

The Brave Ability Of Joni Tada

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Especially when it’s a discarded wheelchair.

Tens of thousands of disabled people in developing countries enjoy the dignity of moving about in rehabilitated wheelchairs, thanks to Joni Eareckson Tada.

The minister and disability-rights advocate has touched countless lives with her wheelchair project.

But she might never have had such an impact had it not been for one fateful summer day in 1967.

Just 17, she dived off a raft in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and fractured her spinal cord, paralyzing herself from the neck down. Continue Reading »

Study Seeks New Way to Enhance Neuron Repair in Spinal Cord Injury

Newswise — If researchers could determine how to send signals to cells responding to a spinal cord injury, they might be able to stop one type of cell from doing additional damage at the injury site and instead, coax it into helping nerve cells grow. Continue Reading »

SMU leads $5.6M research center for fiber optic interface to link robotic limbs, human brain

Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees with the establishment of a multimillion-dollar research center led by SMU engineers.

Funded by a Department of Defense initiative dedicated to audacious challenges and intense time schedules, the Neurophotonics Research Center will develop two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves. Continue Reading »

Recovering Movement In Chronic Spinal Cord Injury

The University of California, Irvine, has just completed the very first study to show that human stem cells can bring back movement in spinal cord injury, advocating the possibility of treatment for a more vast populace of patients.

Past breakthroughs in stem cell studies concentrated on the vital or beginning stage of spinal cord injury, a time span of up to a couple of weeks after the onset of the trauma when medications can bring about some mobile recovery. Continue Reading »

Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation Announces Expansion of NeuroRecovery Network

Three community-based health and wellness facilities to provide better access to exercise for those living with paralysis

The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation has named three new locations to its NeuroRecovery Network (NRN) Community Fitness and Wellness facilities, which afford people with physical disabilities the chance to improve their health through exercise. Courage Center in Minneapolis, MN, Neuroworx in South Jordan, UT, and NextSteps Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois join Frazier Rehab Institute – Community Fitness and Wellness Facility in Louisville, KY and NextStep Fitness in Lawndale, CA. Continue Reading »

Electrical nerve stimulation may relieve neuropathic pain after spinal cord injury

A new study has revealed that electrical nerve stimulation can effectively reduce neuropathic pain following a spinal cord injury.

Neuropathic pain is often difficult to relieve and usually managed with drugs such as antidepressants or anticonvulsants.

In the new study, researchers assessed the short-term effects of high- and low-frequency transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on neuropathic pain following SCI. Continue Reading »