This is where the staff of the Reeve Foundation is sharing up-to-the-minute information and putting some context around the news affecting the spinal cord injury and paralysis community. Not to mention insight into what's going on here at the Foundation.
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How electrical pulses can defeat paralysis
Posted by
JLoFriday, October 07, 2011
The incredible research breakthrough and story of Rob Summers first broke in May. It is now further elaborated in a piece in Popular Mechanics. Read on:
Summers, one of more than 1.3 million Americans who live with spinal cord injuries, recovered unprecedented voluntary movement for someone with complete paralysis. "The third day they turned it on, I stood independently after not moving anything in four years," he says. With stimulation, Summers can now bear his own weight for 4 to 25 minutes, move his toes, ankles, knees and hips on command and take a few steps on a treadmill. According to research published in The Lancet, he also resumed some bodily functions including the ability to sweat—which enabled him to work as a guest pitching coach at a baseball camp in Florida. "Prior to that, my body couldn't handle the heat," he says. While the scientists, who have approval for four more human subjects, are cautiously optimistic, researchers from the University of Zurich were less reserved in a commentary that appeared in the same issue of The Lancet: "We are entering a new era when the time has come for spinal-cord-injured patients to move." (Photo: Misha Gravenor)
Read the rest.
More on the breakthrough.
Janelle
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