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For safety reasons, Chinnock is currently using the device only under surveillance, but the implications of the study – namely that paralysis may not be permanent after a serious injury to the spine – could be huge.
"Our findings, combined with previous evidence, underscore the need to re-evaluate our current understanding of spinal cord injury in order to realize the potential of emerging technologies for functional recovery, once thought to be definitively lost. "
The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, was conducted jointly with the University of California and was funded in part by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
Christopher Reeve, best known for his leading role in Superman films, was left paraplegic after a riding accident in 1995.
MORE DISCOVERIES
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, two patients from an American experimental program of rehabilitation of paralyzed people were able to walk again through electrical stimulation of the spinal cord. Two others were able to stand up or sit down.
The Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center at the University of Louisville had already reported in 2014 that some paralyzed patients regained sensation through electrical stimulation.
This time, the center announced that after months of retraining, two participants in its experimental program were able to walk with the support of a walker or cane, stimulated by an electrode in the column vertebral related to an implant in the abdomen.
Two other participants were able to get up or sit down.
"The four participants could not do these actions in the trials when the pacemaker was off," said the study's authors.
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