Mapping the Long Rocky Road to Effective Spinal Cord Injury Therapy: A Meta-Review of Pre-Clinical and Clinical Research

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a rare condition, which even after decades of research, to date still presents an incurable condition with a complex symptomatology. An SCI can result in paralysis, pain, loss of sensation, bladder and sexual dysfunction, and muscle degeneration, to name but a few. The large number of publications makes it difficult to keep track of current progress in the field and of the many treatment options that have been suggested and are being proposed with increasing frequency. Scientific databases with user-oriented search options will offer possible solutions, but they are still mostly in the development phase. In this meta-analysis, we summarize and narrow down SCI therapeutic approaches applied in pre-clinical and clinical research. Statistical analyses of treatment clusters—assorted after counting annual publication numbers in PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov databases—were performed to allow the comparison of research foci and of their translation efficacy into clinical therapy. Using the example of SCI research, our findings demonstrate the challenges that come with the accelerating research progress—an issue that many research fields are faced with today. The analyses point out similarities and differences in the prioritization of SCI research in pre-clinical versus clinical therapy strategies. Moreover, the results demonstrate the rapidly growing importance of modern (bio-)engineering technologies.