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Two breakthrough trials have opened parallel paths to restoring motion after spinal cords have been partly or completely severed.
Using electrical stimulation to reactivate spinal neurons, researchers at Switzerland’s Lausanne University have enabled three patients with partly or completely severed spinal cords to stand, walk, pedal a bike, twist their torsos, and even swim.
Other scientists, in past attempts, were unable to restore complete motion.
The Lausanne team improved on those attempts by designing longer, wider implanted electrical leads that linked more closely to spinal nerve roots. The innovation gives precise control over the neurons governing specific muscles.
The neurons are stimulated by a pacemaker implanted in a patient’s abdomen. The motions that result are controlled by software programs.
The patient selects the type of activity—walking or pedaling, for example—on a tablet or smartphone, which then sends instructions to the neurons about which muscles to stimulate and how to move them.
The patients in the trial regained motion the day after their implant surgeries.
Paired with several weeks of physical therapy, the men were able to carry out the activities fluidly and get around in community settings.
Biochemists at Northwestern University are making a longer-term bet.
They created protein molecules that self-assemble into long fibers when the molecules are injected into the site of spinal injuries.
The fibers formed a gel at the injury site that stimulated the growth of new neurons, new blood vessels to nourish the growing cells, and reduced formation of scar tissue, typically a barrier to cell regeneration.
Four weeks after trying the technique on mice whose hind legs had been paralyzed by damaging their spinal cords, the mice were walking on all fours again.
TRENDPOST: Northwestern’s breakthrough is another step in a broad array of work attempting to regenerate neurons in severed spinal cords. At least one form of regenerative treatment will be ready for human clinical trials by the end of this decade.
Meanwhile, advances in electrically reconnecting severed cords will progress even more quickly and successfully.
In the not too distant future, these and similar techniques will put quadriplegia in humanity’s past.