Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is accompanied by a dramatic inflammatory response, which escalates over the first week post-injury and is thought to contribute to secondary pathology after SCI. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR) are widely expressed nuclear receptors whose activation has led to diminished pro-inflammatory cascades in several CNS disorders. Therefore, we examined the efficacy of the PPARgamma agonist Pioglitazone in a rodent SCI model. Rats received a moderate mid-thoracic contusion and were randomly placed into groups receiving vehicle, low dose or high dose Pioglitazone. Drug or vehicle was injected i.p. at 15 min post-injury and then every 12 h for the first 7 days post-injury. Locomotor function was followed for 5 weeks using the BBB scale. BBB scores were greater in treated animals at 7 days post-injury and significant improvements in BBB subscores were noted, including better toe clearance, earlier stepping and more parallel paw position. Stereological measurements throughout the lesion revealed a significant increase in rostral spared white matter in both Pioglitazone treatment groups. Spinal cords from the high dose group also had significantly more gray matter sparing and motor neurons rostral and caudal to epicenter. Thus, our results reveal that clinical treatment with Pioglitazone, an FDA-approved drug used currently for diabetes, may be a feasible and promising strategy for promoting anatomical and functional repair after SCI.

Efforts to understand spinal cord injury (SCI) and other complex neurotrauma disorders at the pre-clinical level have shown progress in recent years. However, successful translation of basic research into clinical practice has been slow, partly because of the large, heterogeneous data sets involved. In this sense, translational neurological research represents a "big data" problem. In an effort to expedite translation of pre-clinical knowledge into standards of patient care for SCI, we describe the development of a novel database for translational neurotrauma research known as Visualized Syndromic Information and Outcomes for Neurotrauma-SCI (VISION-SCI). We present demographics, descriptive statistics, and translational syndromic outcomes derived from our ongoing efforts to build a multi-center, multi-species pre-clinical database for SCI models. We leveraged archived surgical records, postoperative care logs, behavioral outcome measures, and histopathology from approximately 3000 mice, rats, and monkeys from pre-clinical SCI studies published between 1993 and 2013. The majority of animals in the database have measures collected for health monitoring, such as weight loss/gain, heart rate, blood pressure, postoperative monitoring of bladder function and drug/fluid administration, behavioral outcome measures of locomotion, and tissue sparing postmortem. Attempts to align these variables with currently accepted common data elements highlighted the need for more translational outcomes to be identified as clinical endpoints for therapeutic testing. Last, we use syndromic analysis to identify conserved biological mechanisms of recovery after cervical SCI between rats and monkeys that will allow for more-efficient testing of therapeutics that will need to be translated toward future clinical trials.

Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a very rare genetic disorder that is characterized by progressive heterotopic ossification of soft tissues and congenital malformation of the great toes. Although previous case studies have reported hearing loss in individuals with FOP, there have been no large-scale studies regarding the nature or cause of the hearing loss. Here, we report the findings of a two-part study. In Part I, we report the findings of a postal survey regarding hearing loss that was sent to 102 individuals with FOP. In Part II, we report the findings of on-site hearing evaluations of eight individuals with FOP. The findings of both studies indicate that individuals with FOP are at risk for hearing loss and that the type of loss is predominantly conductive in nature, similar to that seen in individuals who have otosclerosis.

Although coaches reported learning related to key skills, learning was not apparent when responses to written vignettes were examined. In contrast, skills were demonstrated in the OSTE, perhaps due to the added structured tasks as well as anticipation of feedback. In conclusion, this portfolio coach training program achieved its desired aim of providing students with portfolio coaches who demonstrated the desired skills, as reported by both coaches and students.