Articles Tagged with spinal injuries cause heart attacks or strokes

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Patients who have suffered a spinal injury may suffer from autonomic dysfunction or  an extreme severity of autonomic reflexes that can trigger panic episodes  and even heart attacks.  In  recent animal studies, researchers found  ways that could circumvent such extreme reflexes.

A spinal injury after a car accident can lead to all kinds of  life-altering consequences.  The person may suffer from limited movement and mobility,  loss of bowel and bladder control,  restricted motor skills and a number of other consequences. One  of those consequences is  autonomic dysfunction which can be characterized by triggering of extreme autonomic reflexes when the person is faced with even mildly triggering situations.  A person with a spinal injury may experience an extreme  response  to a harmless situation, like loss of bladder control, that triggers panic attacks, heart attacks and strokes.  This  lack of control over autonomic reflex responses could even have fatal consequences for the patient.

In a recent study, researchers found that the reason for such autonomic dysfunction could be traced to a particular type of nerve cell. According  to the researchers, patients with a spinal cord injury may experience  an abnormal rewiring of the nerve cells in the affected area. They found that specific nerve fibers called microglia cells were mainly responsible for this abnormal rewiring of the  nerves which, in turn, causes loss of control over autonomic reflexes. Studies on animals found that depletion of these microglia cells helped to control the autonomic reflexes. The researchers found that when these cells were reduced in number,  these extreme reflexes to mild situations were better controlled.  The researchers say that these are significant findings because of the risk to patients with spinal injury who may suffer heart attacks or even strokes as a result of such panic reactions.

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