Saturday � June 14 � 2003 Antibiotic may prevent paralysis Calgary research on mice Brad Evenson National Post
Friday, June 13, 2003 Canadian researchers have discovered a drug used to treat acne pimples may prevent victims of spinal cord injuries from becoming paralyzed. The drug, minocycline, is a common antibiotic. But University of Calgary scientists say it also limits the harmful inflammation in the spinal cord that follows an injury. Mice treated with minocycline were able to walk within days of suffering a crushing spinal injury. "In some cases, you would not have guessed they had a spinal cord injury," said lead investigator Wee Yong, a professor of clinical neuroscience at the University of Calgary. Since minocycline is already in common use in North America and has a good safety record, human trials could begin within months. Every year, about 1,000 Canadians suffer injuries to the spinal cord, mostly in car accidents, falls and sports mishaps. Such injuries can lead to loss of sensation and movement, bladder and bowel control, and may affect sexual function. The injury has two phases. At the moment of injury, some nerves in the spinal cord die immediately. Over the next few days, a wider group of nerve cells goes into shock. "They don't quite die; they go into shock, so they're not working," said neurosurgeon John Hurlbert, chairman of the University of Calgary spine program. Next, the body responds to the injury with inflammation, part of the healing process. But like a crew of firefighters that breaks doors and sprays water everywhere, this inflammation destroys a lot of nerves. This is called secondary degeneration. "It is actually this progressive loss of neurons over a period of days and weeks that is more significant to the disability that ultimately occurs," Dr. Yong said. Currently, doctors use the steroid methylprednisone to block this inflammation, but studies show it works poorly. So Dr. Yong, researcher Jennifer Wells and their colleagues began experimenting with anti-inflammatory drugs that could be fast-tracked to human use if they proved successful. Minocycline, long used in applications ranging from acne to joint pain, had already shown promise in protecting nerves from multiple sclerosis, so they tried it. The findings were striking. Injured mice treated with methylprednisone or not treated were paralyzed. Mice treated with minocycline, meanwhile, had less inflammation and regained their lost mobility. "If it pans out in humans what we have observed in mice, what this could mean is that a person whose spinal cord has been injured would be able to walk out of the hospital, or at least using crutches, rather than suffering the more tragic consequence of permanent paralysis," Dr. Yong said. Dr. Hurlbert, who primarily treats spinal cord patients, said the research team is working to set up a clinical trial. He said minocycline may have a big future. "There are other labs dealing with head injury, with stroke and MS that are looking at the same drug, and they're having exciting results as well," he said. Other experts say the finding is promising, but say more research is needed to understand how minocycline blocks inflammation. "It's a wonderful discovery that needs to be looked at now in more depth to see how far it's going to go," said Lynne Weaver, director of the spinal cord injury program at the Rotman Research Institute in London, Ont. Dr. Weaver would like to see more safety studies in animals, but concedes the drug is relatively free of harmful side effects for human patients. "It's an antibiotic; it's been used for ages, so it's a drug with a high degree of safety," she said. The research appears this week in the journal Brain. [EMAIL PROTECTED] � Copyright 2003 National Post Copyright � 2003 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved. Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com --- URG-L Pour modifier votre adresse de courriel sur URG-L, envoyez un avis a [EMAIL PROTECTED] en indiquant votre nouvelle adresse ainsi que l'ancienne et le nom de la liste.
