According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical
Center, approximately 250,000 people in the United
States live with the long-term consequences of SCI
and approximately 11,000 new spinal cord injuries
occur each year, typically in young men. The majority
of people with SCI are injured under the age of
30 and live with permanent disability and multiple
related medical conditions for more than 40 years
after their injury. The National Spinal Cord Injury
Database at the University of Alabama estimates
that the average lifetime costs directly attributable
to SCI for an individual injured at age 25 varies
from approximately $600,000 to $2.8 million depending
on the severity of the injury.
Until recently, SCI was considered an untreatable
and incurable condition. However, within the last
2 decades, researchers have shown that the spinal
cord is not severed in most people with SCI. Rather,
a stretching or compression of the cord causes nerve
fibers (“axons”) and blood vessels to
tear and unleashes a secondary process of bleeding,
loss of blood flow, and inflammation that causes
more tissue damage. The majority of people with
SCI have some axons that survive the injury and
approximately 50% of people with SCI have some motor
and/or sensory function remaining below the level
of injury. This is called an “incomplete”
SCI. Those with no detectable function below the
injury level are said to have complete SCI. Loss
of function after an SCI may be caused not only
by tearing of axons, but also by loss of myelin
in those axons that survive the injury. Such surviving
axons often lose some or all of their myelin, the
protective coating surrounding the axon. Analogous
to an electrical wire that is stripped of its insulation
and short circuits, loss of the insulating myelin
causes nerve impulses to be delayed or blocked,
resulting in impaired neurological function. In
this regard, some of the loss of function in spinal
cord injury is similar to the loss of function in
multiple sclerosis, in which myelin is stripped
by an immune system attack.
For information about Acorda's clinical trials
of Fampridine-SR in chronic SCI click here.
If you would like to be kept up to date on the progress of Fampridine-SR for spinal cord injury, please click here.
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