A Brief Review of New Advances in the Treatment of Spinal Cord Injuries

Introduction: Spinal Cord Injuries (SCIs) are the main factor in the sensory disorders, which are caused by spinal cord strikes such as car accidents. Previously it was thought that SCIs could not be treated. However, new advances in neurology showed possible treatment to relieve pain in these patients. This article presents a brief review about physiology of spinal cord, kinds of injuries and novel strategies for SCIs treatment. Methods and Materials: This review performed by searching spinal cord injuries, primary injury, secondary injury, cell therapy, molecular therapy, and tissue engineering keywords in various internet data bases such as SID, Google Scholar, and Magiran. Results: The results showed three general therapeutic approaches for the treatment of SCIs, which are cell therapy, molecular therapy, and tissue engineering. Each approach has several sub-categories. In cell therapy, such as neural stem cells (NSCs), mesenchyme stem cells (MSCs), embryonic stem cells (ESs), olfactory unsheathing cells (OECs), Schwann cells (SCs), activated macrophages, and induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSs) have been utilized to study their effects in SCI repair. In recent years, the molecular therapy has been improved in this area and scientists mainly focus on protecting cord injury, overcoming the inhibition, and stimulating axonal growth, which these approaches have been studied in this overview. Discussion and Conclusion: In this review study, the anatomy of spinal cord is introduced and studied briefly. Then, two kinds of injuries in spinal cord damage and also the animal models in SCI research are considered in this review. Finally, three kinds of therapeutic approaches are studied in detail.