Who Plans to Attend Working 2 Walk 2011 ?

[GRAMMY]

kz, I don't know the answers to all of your questions, but awhile back I was reading about the dog/veternarian spinal cord injury work taking place at Purdue. http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/sci.html

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/clinical_trials.html

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/what_we_do.html

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/in_the_news.html

Dogs with spinal cord injuries before and after treatment with polyethylene glycol (PEG). Dr Pete Laverty
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles...e_id=218392473

[jsilver]

Dear Kz and Grammy,

Very few SCI research groups have used a dog model for cord injury for a couple of reasons. 1) While SCI in dogs does occur due to a variety of reasons, just as it does in humans, the resulting injury is not standardized (just as it is not standardized in human). While this situation in dogs does mimic what happens in people quite well, the lack of a reproducible injury so that one can compare experimental versus control groups is essentially impossible. At our early stages of investigation we have to convince people that we, in fact, have an effect at all. So we have to use a lesion that is equivalent in all animals. Of course, if a therapy is to be successful in people it is going to have to be potent enough to be therapeutic in the treatment of broad variety of injuries and cord levels. so the dog trial would be interesting a quite valuable. However, it looks like companies and the FDA are getting on board for approving stem cell trials for human SCI directly from the rat studies, which is a bit scary. 2) Dogs are actually not a great behavioral model for SCI because their motor skills with their paws/legs are relatively limited. For behavioral investigations of the return of motor function rats are great and cats are also quite good. the equipment for studying respiration and bladder/urinary function have all beed designed for rat. 3) the Purdue study of paralyzed dogs was undertaken by a guy named Richard Borgens, who believed that DC currents passed along the length of a cord injury could restore walking. I haven't heard much about this in many years and the story was always what I would call "fringe" science. Lots of hype but not much believable data. 4) the decorin story has still not been independently replicated as far as I know but from the limited amount of data its effects are meagre compared to those of ch'ase.

[jsilver]

Ps. The PEG story is totally bogus.

[alhavel]

Ps. The PEG story is totally bogus.

Good I'm out of anti-freeze and didn't want to have it anyway!

[GRAMMY]

Ps. The PEG story is totally bogus.

Thanks you. It's more than helpful for someone to point out the discrepancy. Sorting the facts from the fiction helps us to focus on the good solid research that is being done. There always seems to be so much information that is misleading or totally false. Thanks for helping us understand this. Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) liquid is actually used in my closed circuit geo-thermal heating/cooling system. I can't imagine using that on SCI.

[kz]

Dear Dr. Silver ,
Hi , Thanks so much indeed for your time , quick reply and long explanation . you have a great weekend.

[kz]

Hi Grammy ,
hope you are doing great. Thanks so much for all the links . take care .

[GRAMMY]

@kz. Doing great here! Getting all packed and ready for my flight to W2W. (Anxious to hear about all the good research going on in the educational presentations that will be aired on video later). You have a great weekend too! I'll try to watch Kates live blogging on my laptop. She says she's got her fingers all warmed up.

[Barrington314mx]

@kz. Doing great here! Getting all packed and ready for my flight to W2W. (Anxious to hear about all the good research going on in the educational presentations that will be aired on video later). You have a great weekend too! I'll try to watch Kates live blogging on my laptop. She says she's got her fingers all warmed up.

someone is going to blog about it while they are there? link please!

[JGNI]

Ps. The PEG story is totally bogus.

Do you mean that all studies using Mg/PEG are bogus and that it has zero protective effects in acute injuries?

BTW, for those who think that PEG=antifreeze, there are many types of PEG and some of you may be drinking some everyday or at least when being prepared for a colonoscopy (PEGlyte, Lax-A-Day, Miralax are examples).

[jsilver]

Amen to that. PEG could fix a few broken worm axons.

[jsilver]

For the PEG effect to work, the cut ends of severed axonal membranes have to remain within just a few microns of each other. You can do this in a cold blooded species like worms, but in mammals the severed axonal ends rapidly retract and then dieback further from each other. They rapidly become too far apart to glue back together. Although the idea was interesting, there was never any believable evidence that this would work in a warm blooded species that has axonal retraction and a robust inflammatory reaction to the injury. I don't know where they got the dog movies but they sure do take your breath away. I wish this had panned out, but all the grants and papers that I reviewed of this strategy never made any sense.

[GRAMMY]

someone is going to blog about it while they are there? link please!

Kate will be logging into carecure right here. Watch the threads for her posts to begin. She types as fast as she can and does a super job. The video's of the general presentations are posted later on U2FP...

[JGNI]

For the PEG effect to work, the cut ends of severed axonal membranes have to remain within just a few microns of each other. You can do this in a cold blooded species like worms, but in mammals the severed axonal ends rapidly retract and then dieback further from each other. They rapidly become too far apart to glue back together. Although the idea was interesting, there was never any believable evidence that this would work in a warm blooded species that has axonal retraction and a robust inflammatory reaction to the injury. I don't know where they got the dog movies but they sure do take your breath away. I wish this had panned out, but all the grants and papers that I reviewed of this strategy never made any sense.

Thanks, I will see you this weekend at W2W.

[cheesecake]

Who's up for a dinner on saturday evening @ hooters about 1.5 blocks from the hotel ?

Walking or Rolling Directions

0.2 mi, 4 mins
Rockville Pike
0.2 mi, 5 mins
Halpine Rd and Rockville Pike
Walking directions to 1584 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852

Hilton Washington DC/Rockville Executive Meeting Center
1750 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD 20852
1. Head northwest on Rockville Pike toward Halpine Rd
Destination will be on the right
0.2 mi

1584 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD 20852

Rockville Pike is super busy and I am not sure if there are sidewalks in that area. Speed limit is aprox 40-50 mph in certain sections.

I would suggest you have someone scout out the walk in advance.