Implant, rehab help 3 paralyzed people take steps
WASHINGTON — Three people whose legs were paralyzed for years can stand and take steps again thanks to an electrical implant that zaps the injured spinal cord — along with months of intense rehab, researchers reported Monday.
The milestone, reported by two teams of scientists working separately, isn’t a cure. The patients walk only with assistance — holding onto a rolling walker or with other help to keep their balance. Switch off the spinal stimulator and they no longer can voluntarily move their legs.
But during one physical therapy session at the Mayo Clinic, 29-year-old Jered Chinnock moved back and forth enough to cover about the length of a football field.
“The walking side of it isn’t something where I just leave my wheelchair behind and away I go,” Chinnock, of Tomah, Wis., told the Associated Press. But, “there is the hopeful side of, maybe I’ll gain that — where I can leave the wheelchair behind, even if it is to walk to the refrigerator.”
The work is part of a quest to help people with spinal cord injuries regain function, and specialists say while it’s only been attempted in a few people, it’s a promising approach that needs more study.
“I’m really excited about this,” said Johns Hopkins University rehabilitation expert Dr. Cristina Sadowsky, who wasn’t involved in the new research. It tapped into “residual connections that are not being used” after a spinal cord injury.
Still, “not everybody who has a similar injury will respond the same,” cautioned Sadowsky, who directs spinal cord therapy at Baltimore’s Kennedy Krieger Institute.
Severe spinal cord injuries leave the brain’s “get moving” instructions unable to reach the nerves that activate muscles. Researchers have tried other technologies, such as encasing patients in robotic-like exoskeletons or implanting muscle stimulators, to help move paralyzed limbs.
With the new approach, the three patients are taking steps under their own power — intentionally moving, according to the reports published Monday by Nature Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine.
How does it work? One theory: Circuits of nerves below the injury site are dormant, but still living. Applying electrical current, in customized patterns, could wake up some of those circuits and, with rigorous rehab to revive the rusty connections, eventually enable them to receive simple commands.
“Recovery can happen if you have the right circumstances,” said University of Louisville professor Susan Harkema, who coauthored the New England Journal study. The spinal cord “relearns to do things, not as well as it did before, but it can function.”
“This study gives hope to people who are faced with paralysis that functional control may be possible,” said Dr. Kendall Lee, a Mayo neurosurgeon who treated Chinnock and co-authored the Nature Medicine report.