The final functional status following spinal cord injury is determined by: 1) The extent of degradation produced by post-trauma processes, and 2) The extent and type of reactive growth, i.e., re-organization. Continued efforts to understand the biochemical and physiological processes which result in further destruction may provide methods for attenuating the effects of spinal cord injury. However, halting further destruction can not be expected to produce repair, and most commonly, the final functional status will reflect the properties of an reorganized portion of the original nervous tissue. Thus, the proposed research efforts of the Spinal Cord Injury Research Center will be directed along two major avenues: (1) a biochemical and pharmacological analysis of degradative events associated with secondary trauma, and (2) a structural and functional analysis of compensatory growth and reorganization of surviving nerve tissue. These post traumatic processes will be examined by a team of investigators utilizing light and electron microscopic techniques, immunological techniques, gas-chromatographic mass spectrometer PO2 and K plus Microelectrodes, measurements of intracellular pH, electrolytes and mitochondrial enzymes and assays of membrane associated phospholipids and gangliosides.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter