Hope for Spinal Cord-Injured Patients

Marcus Donner/Center for Neurotechnology

"As a rehabilitation physician, my experience was that there was always a limit to how much people would recover."

"But now it looks like that's changing. It's so rewarding to see these results."

Dr.Fatma Inanici, lead author, research, University of Washington 

"Both people [in the study] who had no hand movement at the beginning of the study started moving their hands again during stimulation, and were able to produce a measurable force between their fingers and thumb."

We're seeing a common theme across universities -- stimulating the spinal cord electrically is making people better."

Chet Moritz, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, rehabilitation medicine and physiology and biophysics, University of Washington

 

Participants in a new study out of the University of Washington have seen significant improvements in their mobility with a five-month exposure to physical therapy and spinal cord electrical stimulation. The complete mobility impairment that results from spinal cord injury devastates lives; victims are unable to engage in simple taken-for-granted tasks like eating or drinking on their own; they become completely dependent physically on vital daily assistance to aid in ordinary life-tasks.

Spinal Cord Injury B.C. estimates there are 85,556 people in Canada whose physical decline has resulted from spinal cord injury, with no cure for the condition. Typically, patients take part in exercise therapy in hopes of improving motor function, while previous research has indicated that implanting a stimulator to deliver electric current to a damaged spinal cord could offer help to paralyzed patients in their goal to recover mobility.

 

Chet Moritz (left) and Fatma Inanici (center) observe as a participant (right) measures grip strength (by squeezing the device in his hand). The participant has sensors on his arms (black cases) to measure his arm muscle activity during the task. Note: This photo was taken in 2019.  Marcus Donner/Center for Neurotechnology

 

Researchers at University of Washington have gone one step further in a bid to accelerate the drive toward success in restoration of a measure of mobility for those with spinal cord injuries. A non-surgical therapy with the use of patches to stick to the skin like a Band-Aid delivers electrical pulses to the injured area. Their study, operational for five months, recruited six people with spinal cord injuries among whom some were able to move fingers and thumbs, and others possessed no mobility at all.

Researchers monitored baseline limb movement in the first four weeks of the study, moving on to include intensive physical therapy for the second month, training three times weekly for two hours. In the third month physical therapy was combined with Transcutaneous Electrical Spinal Cord Stimulation. The last two months of the study saw participants grouped in the severity of injuries where those with less severe injuries received an additional month of training followed by a month of training in combination with stimulation.

 

The participants with more severe injuries saw their training combined with stimulation followed by training alone, and while some participants regained some level of hand function during training alone, all six participants realized improvements when stimulation was combined with training. Participants moreover, maintained improvements, able to resume hobbies some three to six months following treatment. 

What turned out to be equally if not more encouraging was that some participants saw improvements in other health areas including achieving normal heart rate, improved body temperature regulation and in bladder function.

Fatma Inanici applies small patches that will deliver electrical currents to the injured area on a participant’s neck.    Marcus Donner/Center for Neurotechnology