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View Full Version : In 'unprecedented' advance, paralyzed man takes few steps



MNeagle
19th May 2011, 06:57 PM
After Rob Summers was hit by a car in 2006 and paralyzed from the chest down, he faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair. And despite three years of intensive therapy, Summers showed no signs of improving.

But after becoming the first patient to undergo an experimental treatment, he can now do something no one else in his condition has ever been able to do: Stand, move his hips, knees and ankles, wiggle his toes and even take a few steps, Summers and his doctors announced Thursday.

"This procedure has completely changed my life," said Summers, 25, of Portland, Ore. "For someone who for four years was unable to even move a toe, to have the freedom and ability to stand on my own is the most amazing feeling."

Summers, an Oregon State University championship pitcher before his accident, remains mostly bound to his wheelchair. And his doctors cautioned that much more research is needed before other paralyzed patients could try the treatment -- which involved stimulating his spinal cord with implanted electrodes. But the researchers and others said Summers's improvement is unprecedented and could herald a new era for at least some paralysis victims.

"This is a breakthrough," said Susan Harkema of the University of Louisville who led the research described in a paper to be published online Friday by the journal Lancet.

Researchers have been able to use electrical stimulation of muscles to produce some movement in patients with spinal cord injuries. But Summers marks the first time any paralyzed patient has regained the ability to consciously move parts of their body by directly stimulating the spinal cord, which apparently reactivates the nerve circuits that remain intact.

"It sounds like a pun, but this report is 'an important step', " said Naomi Kleitman of the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, which funded the research with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

In an accompanying commentary, Gregoire Courtine, Rubia van den Brand and Pavel Musienko of the University of Zurich called Summers' response "unprecedented" in the decades-long search to help paralyzed patients. "We are entering a new era when the time has come for spinal-cord-injured people to move," they wrote.

The treatment involves surgically implanting a small strip of electrodes along the lower spinal cord that sends electrical signals designed to mimic those that had been sent by the brain. The approach was tried on Summers after years of studies in animals indicated such stimulation could reactivate communication between the brain and paralyzed limbs.

After the device was implanted, Summers and the researchers went through two years of intensive training to determine the exact stimulation that would enable Summers to move a toe vs. an ankle, stand or take a step after thinking about doing so.

"It was absolutely incredible," Summers said of the feeling when he stood again for the first time. "There are not enough words to describe what I felt. It was an amazing feeling."

It remains unclear exactly how the process works. But the stimulation appears to essentially reboot the spinal cord's neural network and connection with the brain and combine that with sensory information that nerves and pathways in the legs continue to transmit back to the spinal cord, the researchers said.

They cautioned that even in the best scenario, it is not a cure. And it remained unclear how the treatment would work with more extreme types of injuries.

Summers's ability to move lasts only while the stimulator is activated, and doctors are limiting his use to a few hours at a time. But he also has regained some sensation in his lower body, including control over his bladder and some sexual function.

"We have a long road ahead," Harkema said.

But Summers said he was optimistic that he would eventually be able to walk again -- and even perhaps resume playing baseball. "This has been an incredible journey for me," he said. "At one point it was just a dream, and now it's a reality, and now I'm taking literally the next step."

http://www.startribune.com/nation/122267349.html