Radical therapy sees injured US soldier regrow muscle

[Kunal Biswas]

Radical therapy sees injured US soldier regrow muscle

A US soldier whose leg muscles were destroyed by a bomb in Afghanistan has been able to start walking again after using a radical therapy that enabled his body to regrow the lost tissue. Marine Corporal Isaias Hernandez lost 70 per cent of his right thigh muscles in the blast, an injury so severe that amputation is normally the only treatment.
Corporal Hernandez was, however, offered a therapy in which his remaining muscles were impregnated with an experimental growth promoting substance extracted from pig bladders. It prompted the muscles to regenerate to a point that Corporal Hernandez has regained most of his strength.
"It was a remarkable recovery," said Stephen Badylak, the tissue engineering director at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
The significance of the breakthrough is that skeletal muscle, the kind found in arms and legs, does not normally regenerate after an injury or accident.
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That means anyone who loses substantial amounts of muscle in a limb almost inevitably faces amputation. However, if the new treatment is proven -- and it still needs to be put through rigorous trials -- it could mean an entirely new range of therapies becoming available for such patients.
For Corporal Hernandez, then 19, the ordeal began as he tried to fit out a military truck with a small television in preparation for a long journey. As he approached the truck an enemy mortar exploded nearby, blasting him with shrapnel. The TV protected his upper body but not the rest of him.
"Pretty much anything that wasn't covered -- arms and legs -- was hit," he said.
Worst hit was his upper right leg, which was so damaged he could hardly use it.
At first doctors advised him to have the leg amputated but Corporal Hernandez's injury coincided with a rethink by the US military about how to manage the large number of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US government poured $70 million into regenerative medicine research, and Corporal Hernandez is one of the first to benefit from that.
Corporal Hernandez first undertook a fitness regime to build up his existing muscle, then surgeons cut open his thigh and inserted a thin slice of a substance known as extracellular matrix. After a few weeks Corporal Hernandez found his leg rapidly growing in bulk and strength.

Radical therapy sees injured US soldier regrow muscle | The Australian

 

[Ray]

A very interesting news.

Hope the AMC is watching the same and making inquiries.