A 62-year-old Frenchman who struggled to take a few steps without losing his balance due to Parkinson’s disease has regained the use of his legs thanks to an implant that stimulates the spinal cord.
“I could hardly walk without frequent falls, several times a day. In certain situations, like entering an elevator, I was stomping on the spot, I was freezing, as they say,” said Frenchman Marc Gauthier, from Bordeaux, in a press release, according to the media “Science et Future” Monday.
Diagnosed at the age of only 36, the sixty-year-old suffering from an advanced form of the disease presented serious walking disorders and balance problems, causing him up to five or six falls daily, according to this report. that the research team reported in “Nature Medicine” on Monday.
Except that a team of researchers from France and Switzerland has developed a tool to stimulate the spinal cord, which would thus make it possible to correct these disorders in patients particularly affected by Parkinson’s, by restoring the nervous signals sent by the brain and damaged by disease.
Concretely, the tool is made up of a field of electrodes implanted near the spinal cord and linked to an electrical pulse generator under the skin of the abdomen, specified the French media.
The team had previously used a similar version of the implant to allow paralyzed patients – as a result of spinal cord injuries – to walk again.
“It is impressive to note that by electrically stimulating the spinal cord in a targeted manner, in the same way as we did in paraplegic patients, we can correct the gait disorders caused by Parkinson’s disease” , rejoiced neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch, professor at the Vaud University Hospital Center (CHUV) and at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, according to “Science et Avenir”.
After only two months of training, using the implant 8 hours a day, the sixty-year-old would have described a “rebirth”, while he would now be able to walk practically normally, 6 kilometers at a time, according to “The Guardian”.
“At no moment [le patient] is not controlled by the machine, clarified for his part Professor Eduardo Martin Moraud, of Lausanne University Hospital, according to the British media. It just improves his ability to walk.”
A clinical trial on six patients, planned for 2024, will attempt to confirm the results obtained with the sixty-year-old.