Creating new neurons to help the injured brain repair itself has long since been a dream of scientists and doctors everywhere; now it may be a reality.
A team of scientists has announced that it may have taken a major step towards realizing that dream with their breakthrough therapeutic technique. According to a Nature Medicine publication, a team of scientists have developed a revolutionary therapeutic technique that greatly increases nerve cell production in rodents with severe stroke-induced brain damage.
The therapy involves the use of a combination of two stem cell therapy methods. The first method involves the graft of neural stem cells into the damaged areas of the brain. The other method includes the use of a compound which has been demonstrated to help neural stem cells grow into neurons in a petri dish.
Pre and post tests show that the mice that received the dual therapy performed significantly better on sensory and motor functioning tests than did mice who did not receive the treatment.
Doctors and scientists alike are confident that this new animal study could have profound implications for the treatment of people who have suffered strokes. If the treatment proves as effective in humans as it has in mice, it could considerably accelerate patient’s recovery.
Scientists and doctors are confident that this new treatment is going to be the touchstone for the future treatment of strokes.
To further demonstrate the efficacy of the treatment, those mice who displayed marked improvement were given a toxin which specifically killed the newly generated neurons, and those same mice that had shown an improvement showed deterioration, demonstrating that it was in fact those specific neurons which grew as a result of the treatment which were responsible for the demonstrated improvement in sensory and motor functioning.
Scientists were adamant about the fact that the combination of the treatments were far superior to either of the treatments administered by themselves.
