Studies On Cough Reflex May Help Victims Of Spinal Injury
February 13, 1997
GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Studies at the University of Florida Health Science Center may ultimately yield not only better drugs to suppress the urge to cough, but also treatments to improve it in victims of spinal injury.
“We all have experienced times when our sensitivity to cough is elevated because of bronchitis or having a cold,” says Don Bolser, assistant professor of physiological sciences at UF’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “But there are other situations, such as cervical spinal injury, in which cough sensitivity is reduced.”
Actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed after a riding accident on May 30, 1995, has this problem and has been hospitalized repeatedly for lung infections because he is unable to cough up secretions.
Bolser collaborates with neuroscientists at UF’s Health Science Center through a $5.2 million grant funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The five-year program, which supports UF’s nerve regeneration research, began in September 1996 under the direction of Paul J. Reier, the Mark F. Overstreet professor of neurological surgery and neuroscience at UF’s College of Medicine and the UF Brain Institute. Program goals include improving the quality of life for injured people who are unable to walk or even breathe on their own.
Researchers hope to determine whether tissue transplantation methods can be used to repair the damaged spinal cord and thereby restore or improve functions that are either lost or impaired. Emphasis is on a range of movement-related disorders, as well as on the restoration of respiratory, or breathing, function.
“By focusing us on an exploration of how the cough reflex is affected by spinal trauma, Dr. Bolser’s expertise adds another very important and unique dimension to this program,” Reier says.
“This is an extremely important aspect of the problem, one few centers are capable of investigating at this level.”
Other co-investigators involved in the program include UF College of Medicine Eminent Scholar Douglas K. Anderson and neuroscientists Charles Vierck Jr., Louis Ritz, Floyd Thompson, Dena Howland, and Gregory Schrimsher.Collaborators from the UF College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of physiological sciences include Richard Johnson. In addition, Harry G. Goshgarian, a neuroscientist at Wayne State University in Detroit, is associated with the project.