A U.S. marine who almost lost his right leg due to a bomb blast in Afghanistan, has become the first to see it grow back, thanks to regenerative medicine that uses a substance from a pig bladder, the Daily Mail reported.

Marine Corporal Isaias Hernandez lost 70 percent of his right thigh muscles that would normally require amputation. However, rather than cutting it off, the remaining leg muscles were injected with an experimental growth-promoting substance found in pig bladders, the report said.

Normally damaged skeletal muscles need to be amputated since they do not regenerate. However in Hernandez’s case, he has regained most of the strength in his right leg.

“It was a remarkable recovery,” Stephen Badylak, engineering director at the University of Pittsburgh, was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

In the near future, if the new treatment is proven, it will offer similar patients with more opportunities for recovery.

The treatment that Corporal Hernandez received was due to the U.S. government’s $70 million investment in research of regenerative medicine, the report added.

By Christopher Kim
Intern Reporter
(chriskim1006@gmail.com)