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Also high on the agenda are brain stimulation, diagnostics and mental health; with organisers expecting around 3,500 neurologists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, clinicians, rehab specialists and hospital trust representatives to attend. The convention, at the NEC, is billed as the only trade show in Europe for brain and spinal experts and will feature over 200 exhibitors. Among them will be those offering new and emerging approaches to rehabilitation, with a range of innovative product and services firms.
Spinal cord injury affects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, with no treatments currently available.Healing is hindered by the lack of nerve regeneration in the injured spinal cord due to factors such as inflammation and glial scarring.
Neuroscientists have found that patients born without the CCR5 gene recover better from mild stroke than patients with it. US university UCLA teamed up with Israeli researchers to study the missing gene’s effect on brain function. CCR5 plays multiple roles in the body and is known as the gene which unlocks the cellular doorway that the HIV virus enters to infect the immune system. It is the same gene that Chinese scientists reportedly altered with a genetic engineering technique known as CRISPR to genetically modify human embryos.
Researchers at the University of Utah Health and University of Washington found that paclitaxel, a cancer drug approved by the US body the FDA, offers protection to mice after experiencing mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Paclitaxel is a chemotherapy drug used to treat several types of cancer and works by stabilising microtubules; the microscopic support beams that give cells shape and offer a mechanism for molecules to move through the cell’s cytoplasm. Researchers theorised that the drug could also stabilise the support framework inside neurons damaged by head impacts.
An internationally-renowned paediatric neuropsychologist is among the speakers at this year’s National Paediatric Brain Injury Conference in London.
A new organisation has been formed to help improve the professional support offered to vulnerable adults who lack or have limited mental capacity.
A new taskforce has been set up to help improve the way the children with brain injuries are treated within the UK education system.
The Independent Neurorehabilitation Providers Alliance (INPA), which represents specialist health and social care firms in the UK, has a new leader.
The search for a motor neurone disease cure has uncovered a way of potentially slowing the disease by boosting energy production in the central nervous system.
Over 5,000 brain injury survivors in the UK are now carrying an ID card designed to help police and other professionals to understand their circumstances.
