POSTTRAUMATIC SECONDARY INSULTS
W. Dalton Dietrich, PhD • Helen M. Bramlett, PhD • Robert P. Yezierski, PhD

Spinal cord injury (SCI) sets off a cascade of cellular and inflammatory responses that lead to loss of tissue and lack of functional recovery. Miami Project researchers have been studying these responses to identify if secondary insults increase tissue damage and worsen behavioral outcome. Immediately after SCI, people often experience problems with breathing, putting them at risk for insufficient oxygen to reach the blood. This can lead to hypoxia, a deficiency of oxygen, in the cells. Additionally, the injury may cause hypotension, a low blood pressure, which may influence blood flow to the central nervous system and hyperthermia, an unusually high fever, which may increase body temperature. The purpose of these studies by Helen Bramlett, PhD and Scientific Director, W. Dalton Dietrich, PhD and their colleagues, was to investigate whether these secondary insults, hypoxia, hypotension or hyperthermia, influence nervous system damage.

Significantly more tissue damage occurred in the groups of animals that experienced hypoxia, hypotension, or hyperthermia induced during the experiments than in those that did not. These results emphasize the need for controlling the oxygen and blood flow to nervous tissue and suggest that complications of SCI, such as fever leading to spinal cord hyperthermia, may add to the severity of injury and significantly affect neurological outcome. These findings indicate that clinical researchers should consider therapies to protect patients from secondary insults after SCI.