uplift trial
A zap of electricity from properly placed electrodes on the back of the neck allows the patient to quadriplegia The data suggests a modest but potentially “life-changing” way to regain function in the hands and arms. The small clinical trial was published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine..
Relatively simple stimulation methods that do not require surgery offer an accessible, more affordable, non-invasive means for people living with paralysis to regain some meaningful function. , say the researchers involved in this study. But further potential for this therapy remains limited, given that scientists don’t understand exactly why it works.
In this trial, 60 quadriplegic patients received at least 24 stimulation treatments over a two-month period. Ultimately, 72% (43 patients) had clinically meaningful improvements in both muscle strength and functional performance. Additionally, 90 percent (54 patients) had improvement in at least one strength or functional outcome. No serious adverse events were reported.
“What’s most interesting to us is that we see effects that improve quality of life,” Chet Moritz, co-author of the study and co-director of the University of Washington’s Center for Neurotechnology, said in a press release. Briefing session. “We also have the possibility that the stimulation is causing neuroplasticity, or in some sense healing some of the damage in the spinal cord injury, and the effects don’t persist beyond the stimulation. That’s what I’m thinking.”
Clinical video of trial participants testing the grip
The trial took place at 14 clinical sites in the United States, Canada, and Europe, but was a prospective study rather than the gold standard design of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Moritz and his colleagues explained that there were a number of reasons for this. First, they did not know whether they could use sham electrical stimulation in the placebo group. Patients can feel real electrical stimulation, described as an internal “buzzing,” and while they could make efforts to replicate that sensation, the effectiveness of a sham treatment was uncertain. There were also ethical concerns about having people with quadriplegia repeatedly return to clinical sites and potentially undergo unpleasant treatments that may not provide any benefit.
Still, the researchers involved in the study are confident that the effects they saw were more than just a placebo effect. First, he underwent standard rehabilitation therapy for two months before all trial participants received stimulation therapy. We then compared their progress in the first phase of the trial to their progress in the second half of the treatment. The differences were “very dramatic across many measures,” Edel Field-Forte, co-author and director of spinal cord injury research at the Shepherd Center in Georgia, said at a press conference.
