Taipei hospital reveals breakthrough paralysis therapy

[manouli]

guys and girls, what do you think about this article?



Taipei hospital reveals breakthrough paralysis therapy

Chang Tsui-fen and Staff Reporter
2011-04-08
12:35 (GMT+8)

After 12 years of research on human subjects, Taipei Veterans General Hospital has successfully demonstrated a self-developed nerve regeneration technology that can treat chronic paralytic patients and restore their nerve functions, making it possible for them to move and walk again.


The hospital announced its discovery on Monday (Apr. 4). The new therapeutic method consists of three major processes: nerve repair surgery, a compound cocktail of drugs and intensive post-surgery rehabilitation.

Dr Cheng Hung-chih, director of the nerve-repair department at the hospital, said their new medical technology of treating patients with chronic spiral cord injuries is the first of its kind, having completed first and second phases of clinic experiments on human patients.

Cheng said the nerve regeneration research project has gone through 12 years of experiments on human subjects with the participation of 133 patients or volunteers. A total of 39 papers written by project researchers to report findings and progresses have been published in credible international medical journals.

continue...

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-s...20110408000060

[Jawaid]

No reliable news about this treatment from anyone here.

[dan_nc]

"The hospital announced its discovery on Monday (Apr. 4). The new therapeutic method consists of three major processes: nerve repair surgery, a compound cocktail of drugs and intensive post-surgery rehabilitation."

What exactly are they doing?

[KofQ]

http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=153396

[Christopher Paddon]

chronic is two months? I think at 29 years post injury I might miss out on this treatment

[chris arnold]

Originally Posted by Christopher Paddon

chronic is two months? I think at 29 years post injury I might miss out on this treatment

In the article:

One of the patients had been paraplegic for as long as 23 years. After being given the nerve regeneration treatment, the patient experienced the recovery of sense function in the anus for the first time.

As always, let the surfer beware! More information is needed, and the word surgery, juxtaposed with spinal cord, sounds alarm bells, though in the end this may be unavoidable.

[tekniko]

you would think it's just nerves no matter how many years or months have passed. Everything should be just like a computer plug-and-play. They just need to figure out which one does what.

[poobear]

this is the first ive heard of this TAIPEI treatment. claim 12 years treatment on human subjects and completed 1st & 2nd phases of study. Wise, nurses, and ANY other person out there do you have any input on this?? it seems that what they claim to have acomplished would have come to the attention of leading researches in the SCI field. please advise poobear

[chak]

Any comment Dr. Wise Young?

[Wise Young]

Originally Posted by poobear

this is the first ive heard of this TAIPEI treatment. claim 12 years treatment on human subjects and completed 1st & 2nd phases of study. Wise, nurses, and ANY other person out there do you have any input on this?? it seems that what they claim to have acomplished would have come to the attention of leading researches in the SCI field. please advise poobear

poobear,

If you do a search of this web site, you will see that there have been many posts and discussions of Henreich Cheng and the work that he has been doing in the Taipei Veterans Hospital. In fact, some people from this web site have received his growth factor cocktail in the past.

In 1996, Henreich Cheng published a seminal paper in Science, showing that peripheral nerve bridges coupled with growth factors will encourage functional regeneration in rats. In fact, I wrote an editorial in Science regarding this paper (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/273/5274/451) and was quite enthusiastic at the time.

When he returned to Taiwan, Henreich applied for permission to start clinical trials using this approach. His bridging method can only be carried out in transected spinal cords and he proposed to try only the growth factor cocktail on patients that did not have transected cords. However, he continued to look for and do the bridging procedure in those with transections.

Last year, if my memory serves me correctly, he reported some recovery in one patient who received both the bridging and growth factor cocktail. He gave a talk in the Tzu Chi. I was waiting for the paper to come out. It is proof of concept that the spinal cord axons can regenerate, given a path for the axons to grow and growth factors.

Some people were skeptical of his work because other investigators were unable to replicate it earlier. The surgery is difficult (I know because we tried and failed) but one group in Los Angeles reported about 3 years ago that they were able to replicate the work. Now, he reports in Journal of Neurosurgery that he is seeing some recovery in patients that have received just FGF cocktail.

I haven't yet read the full paper and so I can't comment in detail about the recovery. However, I hasten to emphasize that this is not a controlled trial and the recovery was partial and occurred in a proportion of the patients. I will try to download the paper and write more detailed comments later.

Wise.