Study Finds Drugs May Curb Damage From Spinal Injuries : Medicine: Tests by City of Hope researchers using a combination of medications on rats yield promising results.
Rats with spine injuries were able to stand and walk after treatment with a combination of drugs, researchers report.
Eugene Roberts of the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., said Monday the research shows it may be possible to prevent the permanent damage that often occurs in spinal injuries by quickly treating patients with drugs that halt damaging inflammation and promote healing.
In the study, to be published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Roberts and his colleagues caused a compression injury to the spinal cords of a group of laboratory rats.
Some of the rats were then treated with one drug, others with two, still others with no drugs, and 16 were treated with a combination of three drugs.
After 21 days, Roberts said, 11 of the 16 rats treated with three drugs were able to stand and walk, with four nearly completely recovered. Those rats treated with no drugs were not able to walk or stand. Those treated with one or two drugs had some recovery, but none could walk.
Roberts said the three drugs appear to suggest a new way of treating spinal cord injuries.
When a mammal has a spinal cord injury, he said, the body tends to aggravate the injury with swelling, inflammation and the secretion of some chemicals. Some of this response is appropriate, said Roberts, but some of it is damaging.
“The body has to have defenders following injury, but it is as if the defenders get excited and start shooting up those they are defending,” he said.
To modify the response to spinal injury in the rats, the researchers used indomethacin, an anti-inflammatory; bacterial lipopolysaccharide, a drug that limits secretion of an immune system protein; and pregnenolone, a type of steroid. This combination seemed to moderate the harmful responses, while helping the changes that support recovery of the spinal cord.
