Stem cell therapy and coordination dynamics therapy to improve spinal cord injury.

Abstract

During competition a motocross athlete suffered a clinically complete spinal cord injury (SCI) at the Thoracic 11/12 levels according to MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging). Six weeks after the accident the subject began intensive Coordination Dynamics Therapy (CDT) at an up-to-date therapy centre. After 6 months of therapy, when further improvements were only marginal, the patient opted for haematopoietic stem cell therapy in addition to ongoing CDT. During two years of stem cell therapy, including 4 sessions of stem cell application, and ongoing coordination dynamics therapy, improvement remained marginal--no more than what would have been achieved with continuing only CDT. It is concluded that this haematopoietic stem cell therapy did not have any beneficial effect on the repair of the spinal cord in this patient. Differences in the regeneration capacity between commonly used laboratory animals and human are addressed. On the basis of a frog model for regeneration, cell communication, and neural control, it is discussed why complete SCI in human are difficult to improve and why for stem cell therapies more proper human knowledge is needed to induce structural repair and direct it to the injured sites of the neuronal networks. Further research is needed to improve and justify the clinical application of stem cell therapy. A thoughtful combination of stem cell therapy and CDT may have a chance of structural repair even in complete SCI. However, objective measures are needed to quantify improvement in MRI (anatomic measure), EMG (measuring of motor programs by sEMG, electrophysiologic measure), and measurements of coordination dynamics (kinesiologic measure).