New hope for people with spinal cord injuries

For the first time, a patient who is paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury can walk again, after receiving a nose olfactory nerve cell into the spinal column.

>>>New hope for people paralyzed by spinal injuries

Darek Fidyka, 38-year-old Bulgarian paralyzed from the chest down, due to a spinal cord injury in 2010. After 19 months of treatment with the olfactory nerve cell transplant in his own nose, he gradually recovered. You can walk around with the frame at your feet and have some feeling in your feet.

Fidyka's condition continued to improve, more than expected. Fidyka was also the first to implement this new treatment. The technique of olfactory cell transplantation into the patient's spinal column has made a major breakthrough in medicine, building a 'nerve bridge' between two damaged spinal columns.

Darek Fidyka patient is taking steps at research center in Wroclaw - (Photo: BBC News)

"We believe that this technique will create a breakthrough, continue to grow, bring hope to patients with paralysis due to spinal cord injury." - Geoffrey Raisman, a professor at the University of London's College of Neurology (UCL), is also the head of the study.

Raisman, a spinal injury specialist at UCL, and a surgeon at Wroclaw University Hospital, Poland have removed one of the olfactory bulb, has a sense of smell function, then implanted olfactory cells (OECs) and olfactory neuronal fibroblasts (ONFs) of patients enter the lesion area.

OECs are a type of cell found in the central and peripheral nervous system. Together with ONFs, they cause nerve fibers to run from the nasal mucosa to the olfactory bulb.

'When the' transporting 'nerve fibers are broken, they are replaced by new nerve fibers, re-entering into the olfactory bulb. The OECs reopen the surface of the olfactory bulb for newly entered nerve fibers, " the researchers explained.

Raisman and his team now plan to use this technique to treat 3-5 patients in the near future.