Hope for people with paralysis

In a landmark research that has given fresh hopes to people with paralysis, scientists have enabled rats with severed spines to walk again using a cocktail of drugs and electrical impulses.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) bathed the paralysed rats’ spinal cords in chemicals and zapped them with electricity to “regrow” their nerves linking the spinal cord to the brain.

After two weeks, the animals were not only able to walk, but climb stairs and run, a feat the researchers said showed that the body could recover from some injuries previously thought to cause permanent paralysis, the Daily Mail reported.

Prof Gregoire Courtine, who led the research, said: “This is the World Cup of neuro-rehabilitation.”

“Our rats have become athletes when just weeks before they were completely paralysed. I am talking about 100 per cent recuperation of voluntary movement,” he said, adding that human trials may begin next year for spinal injury patients.

In their research, published in the journal Science, the team cut the spine tissues of rats making them unable to walk as they could no longer receive signals from the brain.

But when they were suspended in a vest on their hind legs, and the bottom of their spine stimulated using drugs and electrical impulses, the dormant nerves were reactivated.

Signals from the brain were able to “bypass” the injury and restore contact with the lower body, said Prof Courtine.

“The brain established new connections. The cut fibres regrew and established relay connections in the spinal cord which enabled them to pass information from the brain, past the injury in order to restore a voluntary control over the circuitry below the injury,” he said.

The rats could only walk with the chemical and electrical stimulation and scientists would have to devise a safe way of administering these to humans, for example through a catheter, on a long-term basis, the researcher said.

Experts in the field praised the work as a major medical advance which could offer the best hope yet to paralysed patients.

However, they urged caution, pointing out that rats’ nervous systems are not the same as those of humans, and that most spinal injuries involve extensive bruising rather than a neat cut.