LOBSTERS MAY HOLD KEY TO PARALYSIS CURE

Here is good news for the people coping up with spinal injuries and complicated spinal diseases. Scientists have claimed that lobsters could hold the cure to paralysis and brain injury, after they discovered that a simple sugar found in crustacean shells has been able to repair damaged spinal chords.

    A team at the Center for Paralysis Research in Indiana is now working on a possible treatment, based on the shells of the seas creatures. 

Richard Borgens, the centre’s doctor, was quoted by the Sunday Express as saying, “This is the most exciting development for spinal cord and brain injury since World War II”. I am very excited.

    “Using chemicals to repair the damaged nervous system is a completely new way to treat people with these terrible injuries. It’s amazing that one of these special chemicals would turn out to be a sugar. ”

    The sugar, mixed with sterile water, is injected into the blood stream and then migrates to the spinal cord injury where it plugs holes in the coating of the nerve cells.

    Borgens said: “Science has moved in a new direction. Previously we have been looking at drugs which would potentially reduce damage. Now, we are looking at complete repair.”

    Borgens and his team have a well-respected track record of developing therapies for treating nerve damage. They discovered another spinal repair therapy called polyethylene glycol currently undergoing human trials.

This has also been shown to seal and repair damaged spinal cord nerve cells. However the breakdown products of this drug are potentially toxic and are not broken down by the body. (Source: TOI)