Department of Rehabilitation Medicine

S-SCI-MS offers persons with new or with longstanding SCI opportunities to participate in clinical trials of new drugs and other interventions that may decrease the impairment, or increase one's ability to function independently. In the last two decades, MS-SCI-MS has participated in most trials of new SCI drugs, including Sygen (GM 1), 4-Aminopyridine (4-AP) and HP184. In addition, Mount Sinai staff and faculty conduct research on many other aspects of SCI treatments and outcomes, collaborating with the most prominent researchers in the USA and elsewhere. Some of the research is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research; sponsors of other projects include pharmaceutical industry and non-profit organizations.

Current projects that are supported by the MS-SCI-MS Model System grant include:

• Demonstration and evaluation of the Mount Sinai Spinal Cord Injury Model System
• A prospective study of pain after SCI
• Demonstration project: Preventive healthcare for persons with SCI
• Meta-analyses of pain reports and pain treatments in SCI

Other active research projects include:

• Preservation of upper extremity function following SCI: Methodologic support for development of clinical practice guidelines
• Sleep problems and daytime sleepiness in persons with SCI
• Evoked neuropathic pain in persons with SCI
• A longitudinal study of psychosocial outcome and quality of life many years after TBI or SCI
• Reliability of the Bryce/Ragnarsson Pain Taxonomy