How Does Spinal Cord Injury Affect Your Health? Learn More

(CTN News) – Despite the fact that Spinal Cord Injury can cause significant health problems such as diabetes or heart disease, a recent study sheds light on how they can compound these problems.

A study published in Cells Report Medicine noted that after a spinal cord injury, abnormal activity in the nervous system leads to excessive breakdown of fats in tissue, leading to the release of harmful compounds into organs such as the liver.

When used as a Spinal Cord Injury treatment, gabapentin, an anti-nerve pain medication, effectively prevented the metabolic effects of these neurotransmitter releases in the body of mice using animal models when used as a treatment for chronic pain.

The fact that gabapentin also caused insulin resistance, led researchers to adjust the way in which the drug was dosed to maintain its benefits while minimizing any side effects it caused.

Additionally, gabapentin helps to restore metabolic balance by targeting overactive proteins within the nervous system as well.

As a result of this breakthrough, there may be a chance of developing new treatments for secondary health problems associated with Spinal Cord Injury.

In addition to this, people with Spinal Cord Injury are often at risk of developing conditions such as diabetes and heart disease due to abnormal nerve activity that leads to the leakage of fat tissue compounds into the body.

New animal studies have shown that gabapentin, a nerve pain medication, can be given on a short-term basis to prevent these harmful effects, as a result of a short course of treatment.

The lead author of the study Andrea Tedeschi, a professor of neurology in the College of Medicine at Ohio State University, said, “Through the administration of gabapentin, we were able to normalize metabolic functions.”

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