Walking miracle: Hope for paraplegic patients

Scientists say they have ‘reversed’ paralysis with implants

SCIENTISTS say they have succeeded in reversing paralysis, giving hope to millions of patients with spinal injuries.

The medical achievement was long thought to be impossible, but three patients whose spinal nerves were severed are now walking after just a few weeks of therapy.

Surgeons and scientists at Lausanne University in Switzerland say they have achieved the previously unthinkable feat of regrowing nerves in the spinal column.

The three paralysed patients were fitted with a medical device, controlled by a voice-activated watch, that sends an electrical stimulation into the spine. Incredibly, the trio are able to walk unaided even after the electrical device is switched off – and they are also able to feel their legs while walking. Gert-Jan Oskam, 35, from the Netherlands, became paralysed after he was hit by a car in 2011.

He said: ‘I always dreamed of walking again and this dream is now almost there. The doctors told me that I would never be able to walk again.’

Researchers believe that for the first time in human patients, they have come up with a technique that allows nerves to regrow in the spinal cord.

Lead researcher Grégoire Courtine said the treatment involved ‘targeted electrical stimulation with the precision of a Swiss watch’, rather than ‘trial and error’.

The timed pulses stimulate nerves in the spinal cord. At the same time, the patients think about walking as they would have done before their injury.

Combined with an exercise programme of patients walking in harnesses and with walking frames, the electrical stimulation allows the nerve fibres to regrow.

Within a few days of starting treatment, the three patients progressed from a treadmill to supported walking on the ground. Professor Courtine said that without surgery, it was difficult to be certain that the nerves had regrown –but the same technique has regrown spinal nerves in rats.

Chet Moritz, a professor of physiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not connected with the research, said: ‘For many centuries, paralysis due to spinal cord injury was believed to be incurable after any recovery that may have occurred in the first six months. But recently, through a combination of advanced technology delivering electrical stimulation directly to the spinal cord and intensive physical therapy, people with spinal cord injury are beginning to walk again.’

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‘I always dreamed of walking again’