-Blue food coloring is shown to be a promising treatment for spinal cord injuries.
Spinal cord damage and paralysis can be a devastating complication of trauma-related injuries.
There are about 10,000 spinal cord injury cases every year in the United States.
The spinal cord is very delicate and trauma-related injury can lead to irreversible damage, paralysis, loss of nerve function, paraplegia and quadraplegia.
Up to now, there has been no available treatments for a spinal cord injury or medications to protect the nerves from damage.

· According to an article published in the July 2009 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers showed that a certain blue food coloring stopped or inhibited nerve cell death after traumatic injury. The mechanism of nerve cell injury after a spinal cord injury is complex and the blue food coloring appears to interfere with certain chemical messengers that are involved in potentiating the injury to the nerve cells

· Researchers tested the blue food coloring called Brilliant Blue G (BBG) for its ability to protect the nerve cells after traumatic injury. Study authors analyzed spinal cord injuries in rats in a weight-drop model of spinal cord injury.
The rats, which received an injection of Brilliant Blue G (BBG), had less nerve injury after spinal cord trauma.
Administration with Brilliant Blue G (BBG) 15 minutes after injury reduced spinal cord damage and improved nerve function without any toxic effects.
The Brilliant Blue G (BBG) apparently inhibited spinal cord inflammation and certain chemical messengers that mediated secondary damage to the spinal cord.
The Brilliant Blue G (BBG) is very similar to the blue food coloring already found in Gatorade.
Brilliant Blue G (BBG) is very safe and does not have any apparent side effects.
This is an important study and confirmation trials in humans should be easy to accomplish, especially since Brilliant Blue G is a derivative of a commonly used blue food color which does not have any apparent toxicities.

· Spinal cord injuries can be devastating and future treatment with something as easy as blue food coloring may be a key to preventing catastrophic nerve damage.

Cristopher Geiler, MD

Reference
Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2009;106:12489-12493.