A recent 2011 article published in the Journal of Biomedical Science shows promise for reducing the extent of spinal cord injury due to inflammation by using antioxidants. Following spinal cord injury (SCI), Proteins related to oxireduction and signal transduction can contribute to extensive inflammation. Events like apoptosis, necrosis, metabolic disturbances, destruction of microvasculature, inflammation, demyelination, glial scar formation as well as many other changes occur immediately following an acute or chronic spinal cord injury and can persist for weeks. Researchers measured a large list of factors at day 1 and day 14. Factors like galectin-3 involved in cell differentiation, heat shock beta-1 protein involved in oxireduction, were all up regulated. Factors like Fascin-1 involved in actin filament binding, Dihydropyrimidinase-protein 2 involved in neurogenesis, were down regulated at day 14 compared to day 1. This research gives a lot of information as to the extensive list of biomolecules responsible for cellular repair, inflammation, and regeneration following acute to chronic spinal
cord injury and many possible targets for inflammation modulation and cellular repair.
Wang et. al Journal of Biomedical Science 2011, 18:13
http//www.jbiomedsci.com/content/18/1/13
This is a really interesting article. Spinal cord injury is very common and being able to prevent neural cell death would be awesome. However, the method used to decrease the effects of inflammation is important. Inflammation can have negative effects, but there is also a reason why we have it. What I like about this article's method in controlling the inflammation is that it discusses the use antioxidants rather than stronger anti-inflammatory treatments. However, by using anti-oxidants is it possible that a protective mechanism triggered by ROS factors can be effected? Did the study discuss any negative effects of anti-oxidants after spinal cord injury?
ReplyDeleteThis is quite an extensive article and the way they induced SPI I'd never seen before. Poor rats. Nevertheless it is a really interesting subject as I have also looked into antioxidant treatment articles that have addressed issues with chronic inflammation and disease. Most articles agree that oxidative stress is reduced which in turn reduces inflammation, removing the whole "adding insult to injury" aspect of the inflammatory process after injury. I was actually more concerned for how the whole body would react to SCI as its prognosis can be so variable, from paralysis to even death depending on how each rat's body responded which could probably skew results since the whole body is being effected and not just that area of the spinal cord. I also wanted to bring up the question whether or not vertebrae injury would show the same results with antioxidant treatment as did SCI. Just something to look into. Thanks for the article!
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