Things I Like - Science

Image: Takahiro Takano, University of Rochester Medical Center

Too late for Christopher Reeve but we may be making progress on treatment for spinal cord injuries:

By lucky accident, researchers discovered that the commonly used food additive FD&C blue dye No. 1 is remarkably similar to a lab compound that blocks a key step in nerve inflammation ... [they] reported only one adverse effect: The rats turned blue.

To test whether the compound could improve recovery after spinal cord injury, rats were given an intravenous infusion of Brilliant Blue G, which is nearly identical to blue food dye, 15 minutes after a 10-gram weight was dropped on their spinal cords (under anesthesia).

Animals who received the blue dye recovered much faster than animals who didn’t: By six weeks, the treatment group could walk with a limp, while the no-treatment group never recovered the ability to walk.
~Wired

The piece goes on to explain that we currently have no treatment for patients with spinal cord injury and this discovery requires further research and clinical trials before it can lead to development of a human protocol. Unfortunately, no one (ie, the drug companies) is willing to fund further studies because the product itself is too cheap – it would never be profitable.

Wow. Makes me proud to be a capitalist.

Also, wasn’t it nice that the rats were anesthetized before being injured?