New electric-current therapy may offer paralysis cure
Rob Summers was a strong and fit college athlete who had big dreams of playing Major League Baseball.
But all that ended when he was struck by a car and left a quadriplegic.
For Kent Stephenson, it was a motorcycle accident at 21 that left him paralyzed from the chest down.
Rob and Kent are among hundreds of thousands in the U.S. with paralyzing spinal cord injuries who were told that life as they knew it was over.
They were told there was no hope for a cure.
But now all that may be changing — thanks to a 75-year-old UCLA professor who everyone called crazy.
It doesn’t get any respect — and doctors have long written off any hope that the spinal cord could repair itself.
But Edgerton was convinced they were wrong, and spent most of his career trying to prove it.
And it looks like he just did.
You see, Edgerton believed that the spinal cord — like other parts of the nervous system — could learn to adapt from an injury. He just needed to find the precise way to help it do that.
So he began using a small device (already approved by the FDA for pain management) to send electrical currents to “jump-start” damaged spinal cords.
He started with rats and then humans — and the results have been nothing short of remarkable.
So far, he’s been able to demonstrate the effectiveness of electrical stimulation on nearly a dozen paralysis victims, including Rob and Kent.
The men he’s treated have been able to move their limbs and control their bowels and bladders for the first time in years. They’ve even been able to function sexually again.
And they can now stand, and with help, take some steps.
Edgerton’s work has prompted Dr. Rodgeric Pettigrew, the director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, to declare that “spinal cord injury may no longer mean a lifelong sentence of paralysis.”
Of course, people weren’t always patting Edgerton on the back.
For many years he was ridiculed, even laughed at, said a colleague.
And since funding for his idea was as scarce as hen’s teeth, he was pretty much on his own. He says that at his lowest point he was able to keep going when Easter Seals gave him a meager donation of $2,500.
But now that he has been able to prove his research, he’s been getting some major backing that includes the National Institutes of Health and, perhaps most importantly, the Reeve Foundation (started by the late actor Christopher Reeve who was paralyzed in a horseback riding accident).
Edgerton is now on the advisory panel for the Reeve Foundation, which will be conducting a trial using his electronic stimulation technique on 36 men and women. They’re calling it “The BIG Idea.”
To learn more about The BIG Idea or find out how someone who has been paralyzed by a spinal cord injury can take part in a clinical trial, click on this link. br>
Hopefully, the concept of being permanently confined to a wheelchair following a spine injury will soon be a thing of the past.
And we’ll all have Dr. Reggie Edgerton, who never lost hope that the spinal cord could be “reawakened,” to thank.
Sources:
“A dogged quest to fix broken spinal cords pays off with new hope for the paralyzed” Usha Lee McFarling” March 30, 2016, Stat, statnews.com
