Every year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from paralyzed limbs as a result of peripheral nerve injury. Recently, implantation of artificial nerve grafts has become the method of choice for repairing damaged peripheral nerves. Grafts can lead to some degree of functional recovery when a short segment of nerve is damaged. But they are of little use when it comes to regenerating nerves over distances greater than a few millimeters, and such injuries therefore often lead to permanent paralysis.
Now though, surgeons from Germany have made what could be a significant advance in nerve tissue engineering. They have developed artificial nerve grafts made from hollowed-out pig veins filled with spider silk fibres and, in a series of animal experiments, showed that the grafts can enhance the regeneration of peripheral nerves over distances of up to 6cm. Their findings have just been published in the open access journal PLoS One.
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