Science / Medicine : Nerve Fibers Regenerated in Paralysis Research

Scientists said last week that they had succeeded in regenerating nerve fibers from the human central nervous system for the first time, a step that could eventually lead to restoring some function to paralyzed limbs. The University of Miami researchers cautioned in their paper in the journal Experimental Neurology that the work has been done only in the laboratory and that it will probably be five years before researchers attempt to restore movement to paralyzed muscles.

At that point, the first efforts will concentrate on partially restoring quadriplegics’ arm movement, said Dr. Richard Bunge of the university’s Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. “I do not anticipate that function would be as precise as our natural motor functions are,” he said. “But the bottom line is that adult central nerve cells have the capacity to regenerate.”

The process is not a cure for paralysis victims but offers hope of eventually reducing the level of disability resulting from spinal cord injury, Bunge said. About 500,000 Americans have some type of paralysis as a result of a spinal cord injury, with about 10,000 new injuries reported annually.

The key to their success involved enclosing the damaged nerve cells in a “splint” of nerve cells taken from other areas of the body, such as the hands.