Using a two-pronged approach to encouraging growth, American scientists say they’ve made an important advance in regenerating damaged nerve fibers.A combination of activating nerve cells’ natural growth state and using gene therapy to mute the effects of growth-inhibiting factors let them achieve about three times more nerve fiber regeneration than previous attempts, say researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. Results appear in the Feb. 18 Journal of Neuroscience.The experiments were conducted on the damaged optic nerves of rats.
