Washington, Nov. 30: Researches may have found a way to grow back a damaged spine.
Bad discs between vertebrae are a common cause of lower back pain and it was often thought near impossible for the discs, which are cartilage, to heal.
However, Swedish researchers believe they have been able to grow human stem cells that would help a damaged disc to regenerate.
Disc degeneration is a change in the properties of invertebrate discs, which are mainly made of cartilage, that leads to the risk of them becoming too thin.
Degenerative discs are thought to be responsible for lower back pain as one vertebrae rubs onto another. Back discs are generally thought to be unable to heal themselves.
Gothenburg University researcher, Ms Helena Barreto-Henriksson, said her team had discovered areas in the discs that were similar to stem cells and may have the potential to grow back. “It is generally believed that cartilage has no, or very little, capacity to heal, and knowledge about how cell division takes place in invertebrate discs is limited,” Ms Barreto-Henriksson said.
The research printed in the Cells, Tissues and Organs journal detailed how injecting human stem cells into a damaged animal’s back discs had led to the cartilage repairing itself.