Rebuilding Muscle Tissue: Experimental Treatment Helps Bomb Victims

A team of U.S. researchers said on Wednesday that they have refined a method for regenerating muscle tissue. The new type of treatment, which uses the lining of pig bladders, has shown some success in regrowing lost tissue for patients who suffered from various traumatic injuries.

"It's a good correlation of a treatment of a muscle volumetric defect-in people-with an effort to understand the actual effect on muscle repair that's occurring," said Jason Pomerantz, who focuses on tissue regeneration at the University of California, San Francisco, but was not involved in the study, via The Scientist.

The researchers initially began preliminary work in mice. Results showed positive improvements when the rodents were able to walk again with the help of the pig bladders and muscle regeneration.

For the second part of the study involving humans, all participants had suffered from traumatic muscle injuries: Three from military incidents and two from skiing accidents, each classified as volumetric muscle loss. All five men were in their late 20s and early 30s, with around 58 to 90 percent of one of their leg muscles destroyed. All five of the participants were also missing parts of the quadriceps, according to Live Science.

The scientists took the men into surgery, in which scar tissue was removed from a remaining muscle and then applied to the scaffold area. This signaled stem cells within the damaged tissues to develop into muscles themselves.

"Biological scaffolds, when they degrade, release signal molecules," said Dr. Stephen Badylak, of the University of Pittsburgh, who led the study, via Live Science. "They can tell cells to do things like divide and line up in a certain way."

The participants were closely studied for several months, at which time they also received physical therapy. Findings showed that three of the five were able to perform certain tasks standing on one leg. Researchers also tested nerve impulses and blood control on the regrown tissues to make sure that it had actually regenerated. The other two patients, however, showed little to no benefit from the operation.

At this time, researchers are working to test this regenerative technique on different types of patients for future studies.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal Science Translational Medicine.