Publications by authors named "G A Brook"
Article Synopsis
- Extensive brachial plexus injuries often need free functional muscle grafts due to long recovery times, requiring a two-step surgical process involving nerve transfer and eventual muscle transfer.
- A study analyzed 327 muscle transfers over nearly two decades, evaluating motor recovery after 1.5 years using the MRC scale, showing varying outcomes based on graft length.
- Results indicated that direct coaptation produced the best outcomes (83% reaching good muscle strength), while long nerve grafts (30-60 cm) resulted in 73% achieving similar success, but serial nerve grafts led to only 18% seeing significant recovery.
Article Synopsis
- The study looked at how women in the UK with HIV managed their pregnancies, especially those who can keep their virus levels very low without treatment.
- It compared pregnancies before and after 2012 when new guidelines changed how HIV was treated during pregnancy.
- Even with the changes in treatment, there were no new cases of HIV passed to babies, and the way babies were delivered varied quite a bit in recent years.
Schwann cell (SC) transplantation represents a promising therapeutic approach for traumatic spinal cord injury but is frustrated by barrier formation, preventing cell migration, and axonal regeneration at the interface between grafted SCs and reactive resident astrocytes (ACs). Although regenerating axons successfully extend into SC grafts, only a few cross the SC-AC interface to re-enter lesioned neuropil. To date, research has focused on identifying and modifying the molecular mechanisms underlying such scarring cell-cell interactions, while the influence of substrate topography remains largely unexplored.
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- Researchers have developed various strategies to enhance tissue repair after spinal cord injuries, focusing on using bioengineered scaffolds to bridge damaged areas.
- The study utilized light and electron microscopy to analyze the scarring process after implantation of a collagen scaffold in rat spinal cords, revealing tightly packed, uniform cells present at both the repair site and scaffold-host interface.
- These findings suggest that the scarring tissue contains specialized cells resembling perineurial cells, emphasizing the complexity of the healing process following spinal cord injuries and the challenges tied to scaffold integration.