Studies suggest that the immune system’s ability to respond to spinal cord injury declines with age

New research suggests that the immune system’s ability to respond to spinal cord injury declines with age and identifies potential means to improve that response and help patients heal.

This new finding provides important insight into how the immune system responds to spinal cord injury and why that response slows down over time. Furthermore, the important role of the membrane surrounding the spinal cord in enhancing the immune response to spinal cord injury was revealed. Armed with this information, doctors may one day be able to enhance the body’s innate immune response to improve outcomes, especially in older patients.

“Recently, it has been reported that older people are more likely to experience spinal cord injury. We do,” said award-winning researcher Andrea Francesca M. Salvador. She received her doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She said, “We hope our results will help identify points and therapeutic targets for intervention that can improve recovery and address the long-term effects of injury, such as pain.”

Understanding Spinal Cord Injury

Depending on the severity and location of the injury, spinal cord injuries can have devastating and lifelong effects, such as incapacity, loss of bowel control, pain, sexual dysfunction, and uncontrolled convulsions. may give. A better understanding of how the body responds to spinal cord injury is an important step in developing better treatments.

This new discovery is the latest from the lab of Dr. Jonathan Kipnis, who in 2015 with UVA, found that the brain is connected to the immune system by blood vessels long thought to be absent. made an astonishing discovery. Until this groundbreaking revelation, the brain was thought to be essentially isolated from the immune system. The discovery of unknown blood vessels in the membrane surrounding the brain, the meninges, rewrote textbooks and opened up entirely new frontiers in neurological research. Today, “neuroimmunology,” or the study of the relationship between the nervous and immune systems, is one of the hottest areas of neuroscience research, contributing to our understanding and ability to treat a vast array of neurological disorders. is trying to transform .

Salvador, Kipnis, and their colleagues have now determined that the meninges that surround the spinal cord play an important role in the immune response to spinal cord injury. For example, they found that a previously unknown ‘patch’ of meningeal lymph forms over the spinal cord injury site. Further research is needed to elucidate exactly what these structures do, but their formation speaks to the important role of the spinal meninges in the immune response to injury.

In addition, Salvador and co-workers quantified how immune cells respond to spinal cord injury. They found that this response was much stronger in younger lab mice than in older lab mice, suggesting that scientists may be able to target specific immune cells to improve recovery after spinal cord injury. It suggests.

Taken together, these findings make the interaction of the spinal meninges with other components of the central nervous system an exciting new area for researchers seeking a deeper understanding of the body’s complex response to spinal cord injury. It has been found.

This is an interesting finding and may indeed lead to new therapeutic approaches for spinal cord injury patients. We are now working with clinicians, hoping to better understand what is happening to human patients and how our findings translate to bring about real change. I’m here. “

Dr. Jonathan Kipnis, Professor of Medicine, University of Washington, St. Louis, Director of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG Center)

Publication of survey results

The researchers published their findings in the scientific journal Neuron. The team consists of Salvador, Taytea Dikstra, Justin Rustenhoven, Gao Wenching, Susan M. Blackburn, Keshni Bhasin, Michael Q. Don, Rafaela Mano Guimaraes, Sriharsha Gonuguntra, Igor Smirnov and Kipnis. , composed by Jasmine Hertz.