Miracle Non-Invasive Spinal Stimulation Empowers Paralyzed Patients With Voluntary Movement

Five completely paralyzed patients were able to move their legs voluntarily for the very first time with the help of a new technique called transcutaneous stimulation, which combines non-invasive electrical stimulation, an experimental drug and physical therapy. The new technique is the first of its kind and shows promise, CBS reported.

In a statement, Dr. Roderic Pettigrew from National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institute of Health said: "These encouraging results provide continued evidence that spinal cord injury may no longer mean a life-long sentence of paralysis and support the need for more research." Pettigrew is the director of the Institute that conducted the groundbreaking study.

Subjects of the study were five paralyzed men, and they had been living with the condition for several years, ranging between two to six years. Doctors used a combination of electrical stimulation, physical and drug therapy that re-trained patients gradually over several weeks.

In the first weeks of the study, doctors put electrodes on patients' backs, around their spinal cord and started stimulating their nerves. Although patients were not immediately able to move their legs in a radical way, over the several weeks they eventually gained more strength and expanded their range of motion with the help of physical therapy and a new experimental drug buspirone, a drug that is said to aid paralyzed lab mice. The drug enabled trained patients to move their legs without needing electrical stimulation.

Doctors think transcutaneous stimulation therapy may have aided patients in rebuilding a bridge between the signals of brain and spinal cord, which is the underlying reason for the condition.

The lead author of the study Dr. V. Reggie Edgerton said : "It's as if we've reawakened some networks so that once the individuals learned how to use those networks, they become less dependent and even independent of the stimulation," he told CBS.