Doctors in Oswestry Awarded Major Grant from Medical Research Charity
DOCTORS at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital have been awarded a major grant of £107,336 by the Arthritis Research Campaign for research work into the links between slipped discs and back and leg pain, also known as sciatica.
A team at the Centre for Spinal Studies, led by Dr Sally Roberts, will spend the next three years investigating whether slipped discs are responsible for causing sciatica.
Their ultimate aim is to determine whether inflammation is important in causing back and leg pain, and by understanding the origins of the pain, they hope to develop new and improved methods of treatments.
"For many years it has been thought that slipped discs – which mechanically compress the nerve roots between the disc and bone – are responsible for sciatica," explained Dr Roberts.
"New methods for examining the spine, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows the disc and nerve roots to be seen have shown that the story is not so simple, since a large number of people who have never had back or leg pain have slipped discs."
It has been suggested that chemicals produced by cells in a damaged disc can leak out and inflame the nerve root, added Dr Roberts." What we are proposing to do is to examine diagnostic MR images to determine whether nerve roots for patients with sciatic pain are inflamed.
"We will look at discs surgically removed from the same patients for leg or back pain, to see if chemicals produced by these discs could lead to inflammation."
