Treating dogs’ spinal cord injuries could help humans, too

BY SHARON L. PETERS February 6, 2012 5:20PM

Dachshunds will be used in an experimental treatment to help with back injuries.

S ome pet dachshunds, beagles and corgis with spinal cord injuries will undergo an experimental treatment that could, if proven effective, be used on people with similar injuries.

The drug treatment has proven so effective in mice studies that the U.S. Department of Defense has granted $750,000 to support the three-year dog study, launching this spring, with the hope that it can ultimately treat military personnel and others with spinal cord injuries.

“If it works, we will make these dogs better,” says Linda Noble-Haeusslein, professor in the departments of neurological surgery and physical therapy and rehabilitation at the University of California-San Francisco, who designed the drug intervention. Currently no therapy improves function of these long-backed, short-legged little breeds, large numbers of which are left paralyzed by spontaneous disc ruptures that bruise or tear their spinal cords.

“It’s a win-win” if the study helps animals and also makes “a much stronger argument that this could work with humans,” she says. She’s collaborating with a veterinarian at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University who, with owners’ permission, will use the treatment.

The collaboration is among a growing number aimed both at improving dog health and also advancing research for human medicine. Among them: research on a chronic intestinal inflammation common in West Highland terriers that may offer clues to inflammatory bowel syndrome in humans, and a study of inflammatory brain disease in pugs that may provide insights into multiple sclerosis.

The spinal cord treatment is a series of shots that block a protein that is released after a disc rupture, causing inflammation to the spinal cord and damage beyond what was caused by the rupture.

The therapy won’t help dogs paralyzed weeks or years ago, she says, as this drug does not regrow pathways already damaged by the protein release. She suspects the same would hold true in humans. Funding this research to establish efficacy in dogs and the possible applicability to humans is, she says, “an investment in treating future” spinal cord injuries.

At least 265,000 people in the United States are living with spinal cord injuries, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center.

Gannett News Service

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