If Rats Can Do It...

Did you see this news?!

From msnbc.com: "Scientists in Switzerland have restored full movement to rats paralyzed by spinal cord injuries in a study that spurs hope that the techniques may hold promise for someday treating people with similar injuries.   
Gregoire Courtine and his team at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne saw rats with severe paralysis walking and running again after a couple of weeks following a combination of electrical and chemical stimulation of the spinal cord together with robotic support.
"Our rats are not only voluntarily initiating a walking gait, but they are soon sprinting, climbing up stairs and avoiding obstacles," said Courtine, whose results from the five-year study will be published in the journal Science on Friday.
Courtine is quick to point out that it remains unclear if a similar technique could help people with spinal cord damage but he adds the technique does hint at new ways of treating paralysis."

From BBC: "Dr Bryce Vissel, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, said he was "excited" by the research.
He said: "The major advance of this new study is to show that it is possible to stimulate almost complete functional recovery in rats with profound injury, using a combination of therapeutic drugs injected into the spinal cord, electrical stimulation of the spinal cord and initial assistance to walk.
"We are on the edge of a truly profound advance in modern medicine: the prospect of repairing the spinal cord after injury."
Dr Mark Bacon, the director of research at the charity Spinal Research, said: "This is a robust demonstration that medical research is moving in the right direction and restoring function after paralysis can no longer be dismissed as a pipedream.
"For all its complexity, the important message here may be that our standard approach to rehab may not be making the most of the potential to restore function if we don't provide appropriate 'rewarding' feedback to every part of the nervous system, including the brain." However he warned that "real world" injuries might be more complicated, with less tissue for new nerves to grow through."

From the Daily Mail: "Experts in the field praised the work, published in the journal Science, as a major medical advance which could offer the best hope yet to paralysed patients.

However they urged caution, pointing out that rats’ nervous systems are not the same as those of humans, and that most spinal injuries involve extensive bruising rather than a neat cut."