There are people in this world who do great things and yet, they never seem to get their names in the papers, millions of dollars, or even recognition from anyone other than their colleagues.
Cops, Firemen, are people that come to mind when I say that, but there's a ton of other professions that need to be trumpeted.
Today, I'm trumpeting the research scientists at UCLA.
Spinal cord damage blocks the routes the brain uses to send messages to the nerve cells that control walking. For years, doctors believed that the only way injured patients could walk again was to regrow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord.
Now, for the first time, a UCLA study shows that the central nervous system can reorganize itself and follow new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement.
The discovery, published in the January edition of the journal Nature Medicine, could lead to new therapies for the estimated 250,000 Americans who suffer from traumatic spinal cord injuries. An additional 10,000 cases occur each year, according to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which helped fund the UCLA study.
In other words, it might be possible to get paraplegics to walk again.
This is major, major scientific news.
"Imagine the long nerve fibers that run between the cells in the brain and lower spinal cord as major freeways," said Dr. Michael Sofroniew, the study's lead author and a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "When there's a traffic accident on the freeway, what do drivers do? They take shorter surface streets. These detours aren't as fast or direct but still allow drivers to reach their destination.
So because of UCLA's doctors, it might be possible to have treatments that will in essence, perform miracles.
Thank you very much to the following people:
Dr. Michael Sofroniew
Gregoire Courtine
Dr. Bingbing Song
Roland Roy
Hui Zhong
Julia Herrmann
Dr. Yan Ao
Jingwei Qi
Reggie Edgerton
It's people like these that you never want to have to meet, but because of their tireless efforts, your catastrophic injury, might not be so catastrophic after all.
Travis
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