NEW YORK: Three patients whose lower bodies were left completely paralysed after spinal cord injuries were able to walk, cycle and swim using a nerve-stimulation device controlled by a touchscreen tablet, researchers reported on Monday.
The patients’ injuries to a region called the thoracic spine – below the neck and above the lowest part of the back – were sustained one to nine years before receiving the treatment. They were able to take their first steps within an hour after neurosurgeons first implanted prototypes of a nerve-stimulation device remotely controlled by artificial-intelligence software.
Over the next six months, the patients regained the ability to engage in the more advanced activities – walking, cycling and swimming in community settings outside of the clinic – by controlling the nerve-stimulation devices themselves using a touchscreen tablet, the researchers said.
The patients – men ages 29, 32, and 41 – all were injured in motor bike accidents.
Grégoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne led the study published in the journal Nature Medicine. They helped establish a Netherlands-based technology company called Onward Medical that is working to commercialise the system.
The company expects to launch a trial in about a year involving 70 to 100 patients, primarily in the United States, Courtine said.
There is no existing treatment to enable the spinal cord to heal itself, but researchers have pursued ways to help paralysed people regain mobility through technology.
If this study’s early results are confirmed in larger studies, people immobilised by spinal cord injuries may someday be able to open a smartphone or talk to a smartwatch, select an activity such as “walk” or “sit”, then send a message to an implanted device that will stimulate their nerves and muscles to make the appropriate movements happen, the researchers said.
Normally to initiate movement the brain sends a message to the spinal cord, telling it to stimulate a pool of nerve cells that in turn activate the necessary muscles, Bloch said.
“It’s something we don’t even think about,” Bloch said. “It comes automatically.”
After complete spinal cord injury, messages from the brain cannot reach the nerves. Other researchers have tried to help paralysed patients walk by stimulating nerves through the back of the spine, using broad electrical fields emitted by implanted devices originally designed to control chronic pain, Courtine said.
Courtine and Bloch and their team redesigned the devices so that electrical signals would enter the spine from the sides instead of from the back. This approach allows very specific targeting and activation of spinal cord regions, Courtine said.
They then devised artificial intelligence algorithms that instruct electrodes on the device to emit signals to stimulate, in the proper sequence, the individual nerves that control the trunk and leg muscles needed for various activities such as getting up from a chair, sitting down and walking.
The software is tailored to each patient’s anatomy, Courtine said.
When the device was implanted, patients could “immediately activate their legs and step”, Bloch said.
But because their muscles were weak from disuse, they needed help with weight-bearing, and they needed to learn how to work with the technology, the researchers said.
The researchers noted that while the patients regained the ability to perform various activities, including controlling their truck muscles, for “extensive periods,” they did not regain natural movements.
Still, Bloch said, “The more they train, the more they start lifting their muscles, the more fluid it becomes.”
MOUSE STUDY
Another peer-reviewed paper by a separate research team in Israel published on Monday in the journal Advanced Science describes an experimental approach for repairing spinal cord injuries. Researchers at Tel Aviv University attempted to repair the spinal cords in injured mice using adult human cells that had been engineered to behave like embryonic stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell in the body.
The animals’ spinal cords had formed scar tissue, which has impeded any benefit of such cells in earlier studies. The researchers first allowed the stem cells to flourish in a special test tube environment, only transplanting them into the mice after the cells had matured into a small network of nerve cells and after the scar tissue had been surgically removed.
They reported achieving an 80 per cent success rate in restoring movement and sensation to the paralysed mice. The researchers said they aim to launch human trials within a few years.
Efforts to use such stem cells to help the spine repair itself and restore the function of organs and limbs have yet to produce an approved treatment in humans.
“There is a long way to prove that it works also in humans, but this is our goal,” said Tal Dvir, who led the team at the Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
