Commonly used supplement may improve recovery from spinal cord injuries

Sasha Rabchevsky, associate professor of physiology, Patrick Sullivan, associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology, and Samir Patel, senior research scientist -- all of the UK Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center (SCoBIRC) -- have discovered that in experimental models, severe spinal cord injury can be treated effectively by administering the supplement acetyl-L-carnitine or ALC, a derivative of essential amino acids that can generate metabolic energy, soon after injury. The results were reported at the recent National Neurotrauma Society Symposium in July 2011, and will be presented again at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in November 2011.  Eurekalert!