Promising new research conducted by some, well, rather renegade scientists at Johns Hopkins suggests that MS may be reversible!

A short-term, very-high dose regimen of the immune-suppressing drug cyclophosphamide seems to slow progression of multiple sclerosis (MS) in most of a small group of patients studied and may even restore neurological function lost to the disease, Johns Hopkins researchers report. The findings in nine people, most of whom had failed all other treatments, suggest new ways to treat a disease that tends to progress relentlessly.

“We didn’t expect such a dramatic return of function,” says Douglas Kerr, M.D., Ph.D, associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Although we’re very early in the game, we think this approach could be the linchpin of a significant advance for MS treatment.”

Researchers have used the so called HiCy treatments with some success at Johns Hopkins for a variety of other immune system disorders, including aplastic anemia, lupus and myasthenia gravis.

Cyclophosphamide kills immune-system cells but spares the bone marrow stem cells that make them. The usual method of delivering it in pulsed, small doses, however, can cause the drug to build up to toxic concentrations in patients’ bodies, causing a variety of side effects, including a greatly increased risk of infection.

Seeking an alternative way to use the drug, Kerr and his colleagues reasoned that HiCy might clear out the majority of a patient’s immune system in one fell swoop, then allow it to ‘reboot,’ giving nerve cells a fresh start and an opportunity to repair themselves. In the current study, nine MS patients got a total single infusion of 200 milligrams per kilogram of cyclophosphamide intravenously over four days, a dose several times higher than that given in pulsed regimens but significantly lower than the total amount usually given patients over time.

Before treatment, Kerr says, the study participants were “the worst of the worst” among MS patients. Eight of the nine patients had failed conventional MS treatments, and several of them were wheelchair-bound.

In yet more research about nerve cell regeneration at the molecular level, scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute have discovered that there is a way to activate stem cells to begin repairing damage around them. EurekAlert reports.

Boston, MA-Scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute have identified specific molecules in the brain that are responsible for awakening and putting to sleep brain stem cells, which, when activated, can transform into neurons (nerve cells) and repair damaged brain tissue. Their findings are published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

An earlier paper (published in the May issue of Stem Cells) by the same scientists laid the foundation for the PNAS study findings by demonstrating that neural stem cells exist in every part of the brain, but are mostly kept silent by chemical signals from support cells known as astrocytes.

³The findings from both papers should have a far-reaching impact,² says principal investigator, Dr. Dong Feng Chen, who is an associate scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute and an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. Chen believes that tapping the brain¹s dormant, but intrinsic, ability to regenerate itself is the best hope for people suffering from brain-ravaging diseases such as Parkinson¹s or Alzheimer¹s disease or traumatic brain or spinal cord injuries.

In one of the strangest, and most promising, things ever seen, a man has regrown almost an inch of finger with the use of what is being termed ‘pixie dust’. The BBC reports.

In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping. Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall’s hobby shop.

That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.

“I put my finger in,” Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, “and that’s when I sliced my finger off.”

It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he’d lost it for good.

Today though, you wouldn’t know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it’s all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.

How? Well that’s the truly remarkable part. It wasn’t a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.

Mr Speivak’s brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.

For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.

“The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.

“It took about four weeks before it was sealed.”

Now he says he has “complete feeling, complete movement.”

The “pixie dust” comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.

Research on traumatic spinal cord injuries is hampered by a reliance on animal experiments that don’t accurately predict human outcomes, says a new study in the upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Reviews in the Neurosciences. The review was written by scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

“Despite decades of animal experiments, we still don’t have a drug to cure spinal cord injury in humans,” says Aysha Akhtar, a neurologist with PCRM and the lead author. “According to the Journal of the American Paraplegic Society, at least 22 agents were found to improve spinal cord injury in animals, but not one of these was helpful in humans,” says Dr. Akhtar.

MONDAY, April 28 (HealthDay News) — Patients having decompression surgery within 24 hours of a cervical spinal cord injury may have a better outcome than those who have the procedure later, according to new research.

Surgical decompression of the spinal cord involves the removal of various tissue or bone fragments that are being squeezed and comprising the spinal cord. While commonly done after an injury occurs, the timing of the procedure varies widely.

The study looked at 170 patients with cervical spinal cord injuries, graded as A (most several neurological involvement) to D (least severe), who underwent decompression surgery.

Six months after the surgery, 24 percent of the patients who had the surgery within 24 hours showed two-grade or greater improvement in their condition compared with only 4 percent in the group that had the surgery more than a day later.

Newswise — Every year, nearly 12,000 individuals in the United States and Canada, mostly young adults, sustain a spinal cord injury (SCI). According to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), SCI costs an estimated $9.7 billion each year in the United States alone. Although there are some surgical interventions, such as decompression, which neurosurgeons administer to SCI patients after injury, these procedures have not dramatically improved overall recovery and outcome. “This is an area of medicine that has not seen tremendous scientific advances, so there remains an urgent need to improve upon current interventions to help restore neurological function in patients with acute SCI,” said Michael Fehlings, MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS, head of the Krembil Neuroscience Center at the University Health Network in Toronto and professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Toronto.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Teams of university scientists backed by U.S. government funds hope to grow new skin, ears, muscles and other body tissue for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department said on Thursday.

The $250 million effort aims to address the Pentagon’s unprecedented challenge of caring for troops returning from the war zones with multiple traumatic injuries, many of which would have been fatal years ago.

“We’ve had just over 900 people, men, some women with amputations of some kind or another since the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Many have also suffered burns, spinal cord injuries and vision loss.

“Getting these people up to where they are functioning and reintegrated, employed, able to help their families and be fully participating members of society, this is our task,” he said.

Under the initiative, the Pentagon launched the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine made up of two teams — the first led by Wake Forest University in North Carolina and the University of Pittsburgh and the second led by Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Cleveland Clinic.

The armed forces have long been innovators in the development and use of technology with many programs eventually having a trickledown effect into the lives of normal citizens. This phenomena has been seen in everything from air travel to ballpoint pens. The exoskeleton concept is nothing new to the community of people interested in mobility challenges, and the US Army appears to be on the fast track to getting something into production rather quickly. After a prototype is developed, deployed, and released we can expect to see civilian impact fairly quickly.

The lightweight aluminium exoskeleton, called XOS, senses Rex’s every move and instantly moves with him; it is almost like a shadow or a second skin. It is designed for agility that can match a human’s, but with strength and endurance that far outweigh our abilities.

With the exoskeleton on and fully powered up, Rex can easily pull down weight of more than 90 kilos, more than he weighs.

For the army the XOS could mean quicker supply lines, or fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly. Initial models would be used as workhorses, on the logistics side.

Later models, the army hopes, could go into combat, carrying heavier weapons, or even wounded colleagues.

See the whole article for more information!

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have identified a process by which sections of nerves, such as those within the spinal cord, have what has been termed a ‘burst generator’ which controls rhythmic motions such as walking. This research, sadly only completed in medicinal leeches at print time, may lead to insights into treatment methodologies to help restore mobility in the future. Medical news today reports:

The study, headed by Joshua Puhl, Ph.D., and Karen Mesce, Ph.D., in the Departments of Entomology and Neuroscience, discovered it’s possible that the human nervous system - within each segment or region of spinal cord - may have its own “unit burst generator” to control rhythmic movements such as walking.

By studying a simpler model of locomotion, in the medicinal leech, the research shows where these unit burst generators reside and that each nerve cord segment has a complete generator. When a neuron fires, it sets off a chain reaction that gives rise to rhythmic movement. Once those circuits are turned on, the body essentially goes on autopilot.

Italian researchers have successfully prevented relapses in 60 percent of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) sufferers in a new study researching the effectiveness of oral medication into the effects of this devastating condition. Currently most MS medications need to be injected, resulting in discomfort and lowered rates of adoption. Though research is both early and continuing, the promising results for an oral delivery route for effective medication could prove to enhance the quality of life for roughly 3 million patients worldwide.

TUESDAY, April 15 (HealthDay News) — The first pill designed to reduce the number of attacks in people with multiple sclerosis appears to be effective in early tests, Italian researchers report.

The pill was effective in preventing relapses in more than 60 percent of patients who took the pill for three years, according to research that was expected to be presented April 15 the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting, in Chicago.

“All of the current treatments for MS must be injected, so having a pill you can swallow with a glass of water would be a welcome improvement for many people,” lead researcher Dr. Giancarlo Comi, from Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, said in a prepared statement.

In the study, Comi’s team treated 281 people with relapsing MS with FTY720 (fingolimod) or a placebo. After six months, two-thirds of the patients who received FTY720 had more than 50 percent fewer relapses, compared with those receiving placebo.

During the three years of the trial, more than 67 percent of the 173 people receiving FTY720 were free of relapses. In addition, 89 percent of the patients were free of disease activity and 75 percent did not develop new lesions or see their lesions enlarge. This was confirmed by MRI scans, the researchers stated.

“The first-line treatments for MS, beta interferon and glatiramer acetate, reduce the relapse rate by only about 30 percent, so this is a significant development for people with MS,” Comi said in a statement.

The most commonly reported side effects of FTY720 were headache, flu and cold symptoms.

The drug works by binding to receptors on immune cells, isolating them in the lymph nodes, thereby reducing their ability to cause the damage associated with MS symptoms.

The study was paid for by Novartis Pharma AG, maker of FTY720.

One expert thinks this preliminary data is encouraging, but a lot more needs to be done to prove the drug’s effectiveness.

“This is a new drug that has a very strong scientific rationale why it could work,” said Dr. John Richert, executive vice president of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. “Certainly, everything we’ve seen so far continues to keep us optimistic.”

Richert noted that over three years, 77 patients receiving the drug dropped out of the study. “You’re left wondering if a more severe adverse event led to the dropouts,” he said.

The six-month data where the drug was tested against placebo looks promising, Richert said. “If this turns out to be a safe oral drug that has substantial benefit, that will be very important for many people with MS,” he added.