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Kent Stephenson is on a treadmill, working to put one foot in front of the other while a team of trainers helps him guide his legs. A harness keeps him standing, but Stephenson is walking, in a sense, again – 10 years after a motocross accident left him paralyzed.
"I did not jump, my engine was stuck and I tried to jump off the bike, it did not work for me, I landed and I landed." I knew almost instantly that I was not could not move my legs. "
A few years after his injury, Stephenson came from his home in Louisville, Texas to participate in an experimental treatment for spinal cord injury that helped him regain some mobility, even though scientists tell him that he was not sure if he had been injured. he will never fully recover.
The woman behind this research is Dr. Susan Harkema, Director of Rehabilitation Research at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center and Director of Research at the Frazier Rehab Institute.
In his office at the University of Louisville, Harkema said spinal cord injuries affected far more than a person's voluntary movements.
"Someone is paralyzed and literally, almost everything is taken away from them," she says. "They do not breathe as well, their heart does not work as well, they can not eat as well, they lose bowel, bladder, sexual function, they can not regulate their temperature. not like before." before."
Harkema says his team of researchers is looking for "additional victories over paralysis" – not a treatment for spinal cord injuries. But even these small victories can mean major improvements for a patient's quality of life.
To do this, the Harkema laboratory launches a new application for a medical device called an epidural stimulator. It is a surgical implant that sends a continuous electrical current to the nervous system and is sometimes used to treat pain.
Harkema and his colleagues discovered that, when they used the device to stimulate the lower parts of a patient's spinal cord, he could help some people with spinal cord injuries to regain a voluntary mobility in the lower part of their body.
This discovery meant that it might be possible to restore certain physiological movements and functions that we thought were lost forever, without actually repairing the neurological void created by the spinal cord injury.
"After a spinal cord injury, as devastating as it is, it is only where the bone is broken that the neurons die, and it's thousands of neurons, but there are millions more still function, "says Harkema. "We have never targeted these people for recovery, and that's what we do here."
"Nobody came back to his condition before his injury, but we had people who could not move their legs but can now move their legs," she says.
For Stephenson, now 31, these additional wins have resulted in a major improvement in his recovery prospects. After his session on the treadmill, Stephenson says he's come a long way since his injury 10 years ago.
"All my voluntary movements have been restored and my independent status returns," he says. "I can feel all that coming back, like coming back just right, coming back alive, it's as if."
Stephenson is one of 21 people to have received epidural stimulator treatment for a spinal cord injury. Harkema warns that it is not suitable for all people with a spinal cord injury and that the operation still involves risks, especially for people whose immune system could be compromised by a spinal cord injury.
The researchers hope, however, that the approval of the Food and Drug Administration will allow medical device manufacturers, insurers and other sectors of the health industry to extend the scope of this new treatment.
"The challenge is access," Harkema says. "Sometimes I say that science is the easiest part, it's all these things that are more difficult, all the players have to come together to get the end result." And there are still others There are still a lot of things to be done, there is still a lot of work to be done. "
Harkema's work has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and many other groups, including the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust.
Beyond the funding, however, Harkema says that it is the patients who remain focused on spinal cord research.
"This is an amazing group of people who can not even imagine how difficult each minute of the day is, with their strength, their courage and their incredible motivation to spend the day. "and so it's easy to be dedicated."
Chris Bentley produced and edited this story for broadcast with Kathleen McKenna. Samantha Raphelson has adapted it for the Web.
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