The field of spinal-cord injury research got a jolt yesterday when researchers announced that a combination of electrostimulation and intense rehabilitation helped a paralyzed man to regain some ability to use his leg muscles to stand and move. As the WSJ reports , Rob Summers, now 25, was hit by a car in 2006 and lost all motor control below his chest, retaining some very limited feeling. After more than two years of locomotor training, a form of rehab that teaches the spinal cord neurons stepping patterns, Summers had a stimulation device implanted with electrodes on key parts of his lower spinal cord. When a constant stream of electric stimulation is delivered to those neurons, Summers is able to pull himself into a standing position and bear his own weight for up to four minutes at a time without assistance. And with help in placing his feet, he can make stepping motions on a treadmill while suspended from a harness. Outside experts said because this is the only reported case of this kind of success, it’s way too early to say whether this might someday be available as a therapy for paralyzed patients, and if so, which ones would benefit. But it points to the fact that, as with treating cancer and HIV, spinal-cord injuries are unlikely to be cured by one single procedure, process or medication, says Ross Zafonte, vice president of medical affairs at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and chairman of the department of physical medicine and

rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. In this case, the combo of locomotor training and electrostimulation produced the advance. In animals, drugs have been added to this mix to further sensitize the spinal cord to sensory messages that aid movement. No such drugs are approved for use in humans, but medications are an avenue for further research. Daniel Sciubba, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University, says drugs preventing programmed cell death, for example, might eventually be combined with rehab, stimulation and even stem-cell therapy to promote regeneration. It’s possible that “when you take all the drugs and all the treatments, you might make the biggest jump,” he says. Effective cocktail treatments, if they do come, are years down the road. And it’s not clear whether this advance or others will help paralyzed people regain all the motor skills lost when they were injured. But there may also be a big opportunity to improve things like bladder and bowel control, sexual function and the ability to regulate body temperature, researchers say. “When you’re living with a spinal-cord injury, those things impact your life,” says Steven Kirshblum, medical director and director of spinal cord injury rehabilitation at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation. (Kirshblum wasn’t directly involved in this research but Kessler has collaborated with the researchers in the past.) “Those domains are so important.” Here’s a WSJ video on the research: Photo: AFP/Getty Images

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Paralysis Research Breakthrough Points to Combination Treatments