Spinal Cord Injury: Non-Animal Research Shows Great Promise
By Kristie Stoick, M.P.H.
Imagine that you are drugged with an anesthetic. You are strapped
face down to a device. Your skin and back muscle are cut away,
a section of your bony spine is removed, and a machine drops a
seven-pound weight onto your exposed spinal cord. You are sewn
back together and wake up, unable to move your legs or go to the
bathroom. You have leg pain so severe you want to chew through
your muscle.
A week later you are offered sugary cereal as an incentive to complete
neurobehavioral tests as researchers try to determine your sensitivity
to temperature or your ability to walk on a treadmill or a rotating
rod. After that, you might have a pump surgically inserted into
your injured back. You are anesthetized and pumped full of formaldehyde.
You never wake up.
Cruelty 101
 This is exactly what happens to nearly 270 mice and rats every
year as students participate in the Ohio State University Spinal
Cord Injury Research Techniques course, which PCRM doctors have
nicknamed “Cruelty 101.”
When PCRM learned of this
National Institutes of Health-sponsored, five-year summer course,
we began a campaign to encourage OSU to develop a more ethical
model of human spinal cord injury. Many PCRM members and thousands
of other physicians and laypersons have written OSU and signed
petitions in support.
Neurologists Demand an Audience
On February 1, 2006, PCRM physicians Aysha Akhtar and Daran Haber
delivered more than 300 petitions signed by neurologists and
neurosurgeons from across the country to OSU President Karen
Holbrook at a university board of directors meeting. The petitioners
asked OSU to increase its investment in human clinical studies
in spinal cord injury, and to move away from attempts to model
injuries in animals, many of whom suffer in the process.
As these
doctors know, hundreds of thousands of people are counting on
spinal cord injury treatment breakthroughs. That’s why
it is crucial that researchers use the best possible research methods—not
outdated animal experiments.
Human-Based Research Shows Potential
There are better ways to study spinal cord injury. In vitro research
using human neural cell lines or whole spinal cord culture can
provide information about the injured tissue itself, as well as
screen for potential therapies. For example, a group of London
researchers found that damage to spinal cord neurons in cell culture
was prevented by inhibiting a specific enzyme.
Noninvasive imaging
techniques can be used to visualize tissue injury and monitor the
effects of experimental therapies. By studying nerve-muscular connections
in both uninjured and spinal cord-injured patients, scientists
have found spinal mechanisms that are responsible for coordinating
opposing muscle movements.
The Human Spinal Cord Injury Model project
at the University of Miami combines the above techniques, as well
as analysis of injured spinal cord tissue, to develop a better
understanding of spinal cord injury in humans.
Clinicians have made
advances in the understanding and treatment of muscle and nerve
pain, muscle spasticity, pressure sores, continence, and exercise
physiology and fitness, to help people who are suffering now. Techniques
like body weight support and functional electronic stimulation
are even helping some walk.
It is urgent that more
researchers are encouraged to develop techniques like these.
What You Can Do
PCRM will continue to push OSU to reform Cruelty 101. We especially
need the support of OSU alumni and health professionals. To find
out how you can help, please visit www.pcrm.org/osu or
contact campaign coordinator Kristie Stoick at kstoick@pcrm.org or
202-686-2210, ext. 335.
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