Spinal cord injury is paired with some neurological deficiencies, social as well as financial burden. This was known as a catastrophic condition of the patient, since the individual suffering from chronic spinal cord injury faces a huge mental physical and financial drain. This is mainly because in spite of charging with extensive medications, rehabilitation therapy, surgeries, nothing came up as a stable technique to cure spinal cord injury forever, in the last few decades.
In spite of such attention and care taken there was no significant improvement. There were actually no particular treatment exclusively for the spinal cord injury. There was no significant therapy to improve the neurological function of the patients suffering from the chronic SCI. In such a situation the idea of treatment trials with the stem cells were introduced. and this brought miraculous results when the injured spinal cords were treated with the stem cells. Look for hospitals where stem cell treatment for spinal cord injury in India is done, by eminent and proficient doctors. Stem cells can be derived from a lot of places when a baby is born. But among a huge variety of its types, the mesenchymal stem cells derived from the bone marrow of the infant is ideally expected to be considered for stem cell therapy.
Extensive research work has been done on this topic which advocated the fact that a direct intramedullary injection to the injured part of the spinal cord, advanced its steps most effectively towards a successful treatment. How effective the treatment is proceeding can be empirically tested by neurological examination, magnetic resonance imaging and some electro physiologic studies. Whether there is a progress in the neuronal regeneration can be successfully identified by the diffusion tensor imaging which actually clearly visualizes the white matter tract. But in spite of different challenging obstacles, the success of the stem cell therapy opened a new visionary for the spinal cord injury treatment. Spinal cord injury has both primary and secondary injury associated with it. Primary injury refers to the injury by external forces such as contusion, laceration or compression. A burst fracture of fracture dislocation of the spinal cord, is the most usual kind of spinal cord injury encountered by contusion.
The secondary injury usually occurs through a chain of reactions followed by the primary injury. These events can happen immediately after a SCI or even several weeks later. Events which follow immediately after the injury also known as the cascade events. The ones that deserve significant mention in this regard and, a decreased blood flow, free radical production, edema, vasospasm, inflammation, lipid peroxidation, excitotoxicity, ischemia etc. All of these might result in cell apoptosis.
The astrocytes cells can also give their significant contribution to glial scar formation, which eventually interfere axon regeneration, and prevent the infiltration of the inflammatory cells. The loss of tissue most obviously forms a fluid filled hollow in which the inhibitory molecules are upregulated. All these makes up a physical barrier for the regeneration of neurons. Stem cells can regenerate on their own, and differentiate into the kind of cells they surround themselves with.
