Archivi categoria: Cure Girls (English)

Blog Posts In English

The Journey to a Cure Video Series: Biology of the Spinal Cord – Part 1

Posted on by

The Journey to a Cure Video Series has been created by the Canadian/American Spinal Research Organizations (CSRO/ASRO)  
Here is the first animated video about the biology of the spine describing the Central Nervous System, the Peripheral Nervous System and their functions. Shortly we’ll post more videos of the series. Our Italian followers can find the translation of the text below.

I nostri follower italiani possono trovare la traduzione dei contenuti scorrendo sotto il video.

Riteniamo sia molto difficile spiegare cosa sia una lesione spinale e comprendere cosa si stia facendo per arrivare ad una cura per la paralisi. Abbiamo pensato che la serie di video “In viaggio verso una cura” creata dalla Canadian / American Spinal Research Organizations (CSRO / ASRO)  potesse essere d’aiuto.

Ecco il primo video sulla biologia della colonna vertebrale che descrive il Sistema Nervoso Centrale, il Sistema Nervoso Periferico e le loro funzioni. Nei prossimi giorni condivideremo altri video appartenenti alla serie.

La Biologia del midollo spinale – Parte 1

Il cervello e il midollo spinale costituiscono il sistema nervoso centrale (SNC) che si ramifica nel sistema nervoso periferico (SNP) estendendosi verso le braccia e le gambe. I nervi fuoriescono dalle vertebre per connettersi e comunicare con muscoli e organi; il sistema nervoso periferico fa da ponte nella comunicazione tra il sistema nervoso centrale (cervello e midollo spinale) e gli arti. Se dal cervello parte un segnale per muovere un braccio, esso passerà attraverso il midollo e il sistema nervoso periferico, quindi arriverà ai muscoli e il nostro braccio si muoverà. Viceversa, le informazioni possono andare dagli organi verso il cervello per comunicare quando si ha fame, quando avvertiamo un dolore o quando abbiamo bisogno di urinare.

Il midollo spinale è protetto da 33 vertebre e racchiuso in una membrana a tre strati. Le vertebre si dividono in 4 settori: cervicale, toracico, lombare e sacrale-coccigea.  La zona lombare ospita una fitta rete di connessioni nota come “Central Pattern Generator”. Questa zona è responsabile di movimenti ritmici che eseguiamo automaticamente, come ad esempio camminare. Ci sono due principali tipi di cellule nel midollo spinale: i neuroni e le cellule gliali.

I neuroni sono cellule nervose e sono responsabili della trasmissione di informazioni tra il cervello e il corpo. Si suddividono principalmente in tre tipi: neuroni motori, sensoriali e interneuroni. I neuroni sensoriali mandano informazioni verso il sistema nervoso centrale che riguardano sensazioni e stimoli; questi neuroni di solito trasmettono i messaggi anche agli interneuroni che sono molto corti e trasmettono in certi casi le informazioni in arrivo ai neuroni motori i quali poi le trasmettono ai muscoli per muoversi. La struttura di un neurone somiglia a un filo elettrico con un’estremità pronta a ricevere i messaggi attraverso una lunga corda per trasmettere il segnale all’estremità opposta dove inoltra l’informazione al neurone seguente. L’estremità del neurone che riceve il segnale si chiama dendrite e somiglia a un albero con tanti rami. La corda si chiama assone e può essere molto corta o arrivare a 90 cm ed è rivestita da una sostanza isolante detta guaina mielinica.

In che modo i neuroni si inviano i segnali?

L’estremità di un assone è collegato alle punte dei dendriti di un altro neurone. Un segnale elettrico, detto impulso nervoso, viene inoltrato lungo un assone attraverso piccoli spazi nella guaina mielinica, la quale riduce la distanza che il segnale percorre spezzando l’assone in piccoli segmenti piuttosto che scorrere per tutta la lunghezza dell’assone. Ciò rende la mielina essenziale per una trasmissione veloce del segnale. Il messaggio da un assone viene trasferito all’estremità del dendrite di un altro neurone attraverso un minuscolo spazio chiamato sinapsi. I neuroni non vengono mai a contatto fra di loro, inoltre il neurone presinaptico (quello che manda il segnale) rilascia dei neurotrasmettitori al neurone postsinaptico (quello che riceve il segnale). I neurotrasmettitori si legano ai recettori sul neurone post sinaptico che infine apre dei cancelli specializzati e permette agli impulsi nervosi di essere trasmessi. È importante conoscere la biologia del midollo spinale e delle sue cellule per puntare a nuove terapie di cui si parlerà nel prossimo video.

Tradotto da Barbara Bucci 

Lolly: I’ve become an official Ambassador for Spinal Research!

Posted on by

Yesterday I visited the Spinal Research team at their office in London.

Louise Wheeler, head of fundraising and events presented me with a certificate of thanks for raising £1,700 for my 350 mile virtual cycle. The donations are still coming in, so thanks again to everyone who sponsored me and still helping me raise awareness for a cure for paralysis!

I’m chuffed to bits and also very proud to announce that I’ve become an official Ambassador for Spinal Research! I will work extremely hard with the charity to keep raising awareness by fundraising, organising events and creating an urgency for a cure for spinal cord injury.

There’s lots of exciting events coming up for Spinal Research charity which I’ll be looking forward to participating in.

Stay in touch with all the research news and events by following #spinalresearch on #Facebook #twitter and also on their website: https://www.spinal-research.org/ 👣

You can also check out @curegirls http://www.curegirls.com for our fundraising/shenanigans! #CureGirls #onamission #cureparalysis #findacure #research #british #curegirl #lollymack #ambassador #charity #dontgiveupthefight #paralysed #quadriplegic #tetraplegic #wecandoit #nevergiveup

Cure Girl Lolly

Cure Girl Lolly’s Visit to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis 2018

Posted on by

Lolly - Miami 3Recently I visited the Miami Project which is one of the largest research centres in the world for spinal cord injury.
Over the years I’ve been visiting the centre regularly and meeting with Dr Kim Anderson to catch up on the latest news and research updates. This time I also met Dr Katie Gant who will be taking over Kim’s role when she leaves soon to work in Cleveland.
Dr. Anderson and I spoke about funding the trials for the Miami Project and as always the funds derive from charities, in their case the majority from The Buoniconti Fund and recent donation from The Walkabout Foundation etc.
Lolly - Miami 1I asked the question which I ask every doctor and researcher that I meet and that is “When do you think a therapy will become available for a reversal for paralysis?” and as always no one can actually give us that answer. Dr Anderson understands our frustration as she too has a spinal cord injury and has been injured for 29 years.
I also asked “Researchers work in many different directions, exoskeletons, electrical stimulation, gene therapy, cell therapy etc. What is in her opinion the line of research that should have priority at the moment if our goal is to walk out of chairs?” Dr Anderson believes that all lines of research are important for spinal cord injury cure as it won’t be necessarily one therapy that will ultimately be a cure for us but we will need a range of physical therapy equipment along with a treatment or range of treatments to cure paralysis.
I also mentioned do they think the focus of cure in general has somewhat diminished since the passing of Christopher Reeve? Dr. Anderson did say that is why awareness is so important, just like what the Cure Girls and others like you are doing to educate and make a strong cure message!
She also replied I know that you girls will never give up!

Cure Girl Lolly

The Cure Girls have donated €10 000 to Spinal Research

Posted on by

The Cure Girls are proud to announce that they have donated €10000 to Spinal Research, the UK’s leading charity funding medical research around the world to develop effective treatments for paralysis caused by spinal cord injury.

After our meeting in London of August 2017 with Alison Wadley (Marketing and Communications Manager at Spinal Research), Prof. Elizabeth Bradbury (Professor of Regenerative Medicine & Neuroplasticity) and her team at King’s College London, the Cure Girls were positively impressed by both the work of Spinal Research and Prof. Elizabeth Bradbury, and decided to contribute even more. The Italian charity ‘Marina Romoli Onlus Association’ founded by the Cure Girl Marina Romoli decided to make a donation of €10 000 to Spinal Research.

_DSC4467This donation will go towards Spinal Research’s CHASE-IT project to develop an effective therapy for spinal cord injury using the neuroplasticity enhancing properties of the bacterial enzyme chondroitinase.

We wish the best of luck to all the researchers involved in the project and hope this effort will bring us an effective therapy for chronic spinal cord injury.

Cure Girls

We are back!

Posted on by

Every Autumn the Italian Cure Girls are involved in organising the Ottobiano Sport Show which is an annual fundraising event supporting the research for a cure for chronic spinal cord injuries.

This year the event will be dedicated mainly to children and will focus on preventing paralysis from spinal cord injury through education for safety, responsibility and awareness. In the report “International Perspectives on Spinal Cord Injury” published by the World Health Organisation in 2013, spinal cord injuries can occur for several different reasons, eg. car accidents, falls, violence, and during work, sport and home activities.  When an injury occurs following a traumatic event (such as a car accident or a fall), within a few seconds you move from a condition of good health to a permanent disability.

We have decided to ask our famous sports personalities and supporters to accompany us in schools to explain to children what it means to be paralysed and try to make them aware of how much a distraction may drastically change their lives and that of their family, thus encouraging them to pay more attention and to support medical research.

The Ottobiano Sport Show which will be commencing soon so we had some meetings in the schools called “Praticate Sport in Sicurezza” (Playing Sport Safely). Over 1,000 students, from middle school to high school attended to hear the advice of great sports champions like Mike Maric, the world famous freediver champion and trainer, Max Verderosa, the Supermoto champion, and also Giacomo Nizzolo who is the world cycling champion.  Video

Cure Girl Loredana told her story and also stories of the other Cure Girls to children in Pavia schools whom have made over 500 drawings on the subject. All this was made possible thanks to the great sport champions, in collaboration with “Associazione Corridori Ciclisti Professionisti Italiani”,  “Associazione Biblioteca Giovannini Magenta” and to the amazing support of “Ottobiano Motorsport”, “Decathlon Voghera“, “H&H Sports Protection” and “Motowide”.

“The goal is to tell children what spinal cord injury actually is and how much it is essential to support research for a cure for people with paralysis, raising awareness at the same time about the dangers and consequences of car and sport accidents which unfortunately can cause it” says Loredana.”I thank our supporters and sponsors for the support they have showed once again. Marina and I, thanks to the activities of her Association (Marina Romoli Onlus), hope to be able to make an important contribution so that paralysis can eventually become curable and if we succeed will be mainly thanks to the people who support us in the many difficult steps we are trying to accomplish each day. In particular, if our presence in schools will help only one of the children who have listened to us, it will be a great achievement for us”.

Loredana commented and invites everybody at the “Pista South Milano in Ottobiano (Pavia) on Sunday, November 19, for Ottobiano Sport Show.

 

London: The Cure Girls Are Back!

Posted on by

Just as we change, so do the cities. Twenty five years later I returned to the Queen’s land. Since I was last here in my early teens (and I still walked), it was a different city for me.

Sabrina e Lolly a ParigiLondon was an incredible experience for its receptivity, accessibility and intensity. Receptivity because I could feel, since my arrival, how the bonds have grown stronger even at a distance — Lolly, her brothers Tony and Gary and their mother Maureen welcomed me as part of the family we really are. The accessibility made it possible for us to fulfill the really intense schedule we had between pubs, Paris and occasional tourism.

Our first appointment was meeting the incredible staff at Spinal Research’s office and formalise the donation of £1,500 that was collected at Stand Up for a Cure — a party which me and Lolly, representing the Cure Girls, organized in Brazil. Our next step was a visit to the lab _DSC4467of Dr. Liz Bradbury at Kings College, where she talked about her fifteen years of research and search for the healing of spinal cord injuries. We got to see incredible things which she uses in her studies. In the afternoon we went to the UCL lab which outlines another line of research, seeking to treat chronic injuries in humans and is funded by the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation. We spoke to Charlotte who is the Finance Manager of NSIF and also the researcher Professor Ying Li and the team. alla nsifWe’re looking forward for the good news in the years to come! On that day I personally met Loredana, my “cure girl sister” from Italy. Hopefully, soon everyone will know even more about the projects and hopes from seven girls around the world fighting for the healing of spinal cord injuries. May the possibility of truly effective treatments for the spinal cord injury arise from this meeting. I’m still dreaming of watching a Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park — and for this to happen, both Mick & Co. and Cure Girls will need science walking by our sides. “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes…”

Cure Girl Sabrina

Barbara: A real Cure Girl

Posted on by

A few days ago, Barbara published this post about her 30th anniversary of her life on a wheelchair. Read it carefully and maybe you will understand why we are struggling so hard for a cure.

Cure Girl Loredana

Barbara

When I was 12 years old I had already passed my first anniversary in my wheelchair and I couldn’t imagine there would be 29 more. Probably no one imagined that, perhaps the doctors neither, the first white coats I met during these long 30 years said: “There is currently no cure for spinal cord injury, but science may bring promising news in the near future.”

I guess that more or less this was the refrain of many doctors at the end of the Eighties, maybe even my parents were told this. Today, we can say that science has made important discoveries, sometimes even extraordinary. But it’s not enough. Unfortunately, there are so many protagonists involved in a spinal cord injury, and each one has a precise role and is connected to another only in a certain way. To restore all the connections, and thus to make the signals pass through the spinal cord again, every single role needs to be restored. When I was admitted to Montecatone Rehabilitation Hospital, in Imola, Italy, (October 1987), a doctor told my father: “Cases like your daughter, twenty years ago would have been deadly. Today at least we can make people live”. Of course the quality of life is different depending on the type of injury and the severity of paralysis, even if we talk about a pathology that doesn’t result only in paralysis. I can’t describe details in a post, but you can find all the information you need on internet, if you are interested. Here is an example that is worth any reference book. If you are really unlucky, an injury may involve the highest part of the spine.

In the first three cervical vertebrae paralysis involves all four limbs, in addition to the muscles for breathing. You are dependent on a mechanical ventilator as well as for all the activities of daily living. This has happened to Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman. He fell from horseback in 1995 and sustained an injury at the first cervical vertebra. Immediately he became a spokesman for all people with sci, struggling to get funds for a cure. In an interview years ago he said: “I want to toast my 50th birthday on my legs!” He celebrated his 50th birthday, but not on his legs, and he was not allowed to postpone for his 60th. He died at 52, nine years after his injury, because of a heart attack, resulting in complications of a pressure sore. And this is one of the “invisible” consequences of a spinal cord injury. Maybe you’re wondering why I talked about Superman in a post on the anniversary of my injury. Because I was one step from his own destiny. Because, although I have a serious motor deficiency, I think there are other thousands of people who would give their soul even just to breathe without that pipe in their throat all day. And this could be possible only if there was a cure. That’s why struggling to support scientific research seems to me the most obvious thing to do. Of course, I am aware that I probably won’t be here anymore when a definitive cure will be found, a cure that makes paralysis due to spinal injuries reversible. But I prefer to help leaving to the next generation a world where those who sustain a spinal cord injury could hear these words: “Don’t worry, now there is a cure and you will walk again soon”.

#nomorepermanentparalysis #curegirls #supportresearch #spinalresearch #wingsforlife #marinaromolionlus

Cure Girl Barbara

The Cure Map

Posted on by

What you will see here is an extended trailer of “The Cure Map” documentary being done by Kelsey Peterson and Madeline Brown

Two women and a dog hit the open road, camera in hand and documentary in the making, in search of answers that bring us closer to a cure for paralysis.

We think this is a very brave initiative as we all would like to know how close are we to a cure and how to make it happen as soon as possible.

We understand how difficult it is to make this journey for a person living with paralysis without even the support of a Spinal Cord Injury organization.

We are confident that this effort will have in the end a positive impact on research for a cure for Chronic Spinal Cord Injury.

You can follow the progress of this project on their FB page

We look forward to watch the whole documentary and wish Kelsey and Madeline to make history with their journey!

 

Cure Girl Loredana

The Cure Girls took part at the 4rd edition of the Wings For Life World Run

Posted on by

Lolly Mack WFLWR in Milan 2017I’m back in London and still absolutely buzzing after attending the Wings For Life World Run in Milan! I met up with my Cure Girls Loredana, Arcangela & Marina along with our 40 strong Cure Girls Team who were running & pushing for a cure for paralysis. The Cure Girl Sabrina took part in Brasilia!

It’s a worldwide run which takes place simultaneously in 33 countries and 100% of the entry fee goes to spinal cord injury research. (111 locations, 155,288 participants and 1,431 183km covered)

For me it’s really emotional seeing everyone taking part in such a huge event for such an important cause which funds research to get people like me and 3 million others OUT of wheelchairs.10k WFLWR 2017 Cure Girls in Milano

The atmosphere in Milan was just amazing, and it makes me so proud to be working alongside my fellow Cure Girls… All of us with the same passion and determination to fight for a cure!

The Cure Girls wants to thank all the supporters!

See you soon!

Cure Girl Lolly

Click here to see pictures of our participation . For more photos and videos of the Cure Girls check out the Cure Girls YouTube channel!