Spinal cord injury (SCI) involves damage to the spinal cord causing both structural and functional changes, which can lead to temporary or permanent alterations. Even though there have been many advances in its treatment, the results of clinical trials suggest that the current therapies are not sufficiently effective. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in regulating this harmful environment by transplanting cultured cells and boosting their antiinflammatory cytokines and growth factors production. Several types of cells have been studied for SCI therapy including, Schwann cells (SC’s), olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), choroid plexus epithelial cells (CPECs), and immune cells (ICs) (lymphocytes, dendritic cells and alternative macrophage and microglia phenotypes). These treatments have shown to be promising and in this chapter, we will review the general aspects of transplanting these cells for SCI therapy as well as the neuroprotective and regenerative responses that different types of cells have reached in different SCI models. The mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are one of the most well studied cell types; however, they were not included in this section because they will be reviewed in another chapter of this book.
Part of the book: Spinal Cord Injury Therapy
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a harmful event that involves several repercussions on sensory and motor function that affects the quality of life (QoL) of patients. After SCI, many damage mechanisms are activated that impact on both autonomous extrinsic and intrinsic innervation toward the gut, and these changes modify the gut motility causing bowel dysfunction (BD), an entity that affects 40% of patients with SCI, being the second comorbidity after loss of mobility with no recognized cure. The severity of complications is ruled by the level and severity of injury, having a worse prognosis with an injury that is the most proximal to the brain. In the last 5 years, some experiments have tried to elucidate the consequences of dysbiosis in the gut and aggregated proinflammatory processes. The goal of this chapter is to establish the importance of bacterial composition and immune system repercussions in bowel dysfunction after SCI and how could it give rise to new therapies.
Part of the book: Paraplegia