Chemical May Help in Nerve Injury Cases

A chemical that dissolves barriers to nerve cell communication may offer hope to patients with brain and spinal injuries now considered untreatable, according to a study of rats in Friday’s Science.

Nervous system injuries are hard to heal because brain and spinal cord cells lose the ability to grow new links as they mature. The enzyme chondroitinase was applied to a part of the rats’ brains, allowing the cells to break connections and rewire them, said neuroscientist Tommaso Pizzorusso of Italy’s University of Florence.

Chondroitinase unravels a net of proteins around the connections, which may allow nerve cells to reattach after damage from accidents, stroke or disease. Spinal cord injuries affect 250,000 people in the U.S., while strokes affect about 4.5 million.

The researchers “are among those who have taken the first crucial step” toward finding a way to heal such injuries, Kevin Fox and Bruce Caterson, neuroscientists at Britain’s Cardiff University, wrote in an accompanying editorial.