banter and General Discussion, page-77

Hi Jakeo17,

Im no Dr, scientist or expert in any sense.

In my opinion, Prof Stuart McGill's textbooks on spinal biomechanics and injury are a great resource of information.

i discovered Msb 14-15 years ago after having my second microdiscectomy at L4-L5.

At that stage Msb was phase 1 Ithink.

At the time I saw around 11 neurosurgeons and or orthopedic surgeons hoping one would have a stem cell treatment or offer a total disc replacement. All of whom discovered after years of rugby collisions, I multiple herniated discs, including 2 at t9-t10 on top of the smashed lumbar ones

The rib cage acts as a brace and sternum bone as post which provides some support and rigidity to thoracic spinal discs.

However, this lack of mobility makes it difficult to gain pain relief from traditional physical therapy exercises that are commonly used in the acute and chronic lumbar dics injuries.

It appears the mechinsim of action in Msb's lumbar disc degeneration treatment is to primarily holt if not reverse the inflammation response which cascades the degeneration of the nucleus pulposus (inner gel substance of the spinal disc) and the
annulus fibrosus (which is the strong wrapping that makes up the outside portion of the intervertebral disc).

Further, The trails to date showed evidence of stopping dehydration of the disc, and on the the mri scans some rehydration.

Another interesting observation was in stopping the inflammation response, it may stop the nerve ingrowth into the disc which is problem of common disc herniation.

So whilst the biomechanics loads on thoracic discs are different to that of the lumbar disc, anatomically thay are the same design and material and both suffer from the same type of degradation even if from different mechanical loads.

Typically lumbar discs injury occur from chronic overload of the disc tissue in a simultaneous mechanical load in flexion, compression and rotation.

The same can be said of thoracic. However because of the bracing nature of the ribcage, large load trauma that of a car crash, rugby collision, etc is required in order to generate the force required to damage the tissue.

The treatment works on the same type of tissue damage so could be seen as effective in both thoracic and lumbar.

lets not forget cervical disc herniation is almost as common as lumbar and most certainly more common then thoracic.

because all three regions of the spine suffer the same mechanical damage I can't see why it won't be used in all three cases.

It should be noted there are many causes for disc degeneration but most commonly it is caused overuse in postures that overload the tissue.

There are types of degeneration that are caused by other factors such as infection and genetics though these are overwhelming uncommon compared to the primary as stated above.

I personally think Clbp was targeted first as it is the most common.

If the trail results come back positive and gain Fda approval, I'd imagine it would not be unrealistic to conceive label extension or off label use in thoracic and cervical disc herniation if the cause if injury was the same.

If that is the case the Clbp candidate would have a significantly larger treatment pool.