X-Message-Number: 24143
Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 08:19:02 -0400
From: 
Subject: Hope for Alcor "Neuros" and James Swayze

Below is an excerpt.  The entire story is at:



http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsspin243817034may24,0,2362681.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

SPINAL CORD STUDY
Therapy shows promise

Three-pronged treatment in rats with lower spine injuries provides 
surprisingly impressive results

BY JAMIE TALAN
STAFF WRITER

May 24, 2004

People with spinal cord injuries may one day regain the use of their limbs 
with a cocktail of treatments that proved extremely beneficial in rats with 
damaged cords, researchers say.

When tested two months after the three-pronged treatment, the animals, with 
lower spine injuries that damaged their hind legs, had more improvement 
than the scientists had ever seen. They walked 70 percent better than 
injured animals that did not have the combination treatment.

The study was designed by scientists at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis 
and included three therapies: A medicine initially developed for 
depression; transplantation of Schwann cells that make myelin, the 
protective covering around axons, which are the long projections attached 
to cells that allow communication to take place throughout the body; and a 
medicine that increases the production of a messenger molecule called 
c-AMP. C-AMP signals genes to carry out specific functions.

Together, these treatments protected against further damage after the cord 
injury and allowed new axons to grow farther than expected. The study 
results appear this week in Nature Medicine.



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