A woman manages to walk thanks to an electronic implant in the marrow after a year bedridden

A woman who had been bedridden for over a year due to a neurodegenerative disease He has managed to get up and walk thanks to an electronic implant that has reactivated the nerves of his spinal cord.

The system has been developed by a team of scientists from the NeuroRestore research center in Switzerland led by Jocelyne Bloch, a neurosurgeon at the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), and by Grégoire Courtine, professor of neuroscience at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL). .

The implant has been used before to treat low blood pressure in quadriplegic patients, but this is the first time it has been applied to a person with a neurodegenerative disease.

The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, explains that the patient suffered from parkinsonian-type multiple system atrophy (MSA-P), a neurodegenerative disease It affects various parts of the nervous system, including the sympathetic nervous system.

P-SMA causes loss of sympathetic neurons that regulate blood pressure, which drops dramatically as soon as patients are upright – a problem known as orthostatic hypotension – and can lead to fainting.

These patients are more likely to fall, have limited ability to stand and walk, and experience a significant decrease in quality of lifesince they must remain reclined so as not to pass out.

The researchers placed the implant directly into the patient’s spinal cord to reactivate neurons that regulate blood pressure and prevent her from losing consciousness when standing up.

The implant, which consists of electrodes connected to an electrical pulse generator commonly used to treat chronic painimproved the body’s ability to regulate blood pressure and allowed the patient to be conscious in an upright position and be able to undergo physiotherapy to walk again.

After being bedridden for eighteen months, the implant allowed the woman to walk up to 250 meters.

For Bloch, this breakthrough opens the way to important clinical advances in the treatment of degenerative diseases.

“We have already seen how this type of therapy can be applied to patients with a spinal cord injury. But now we can explore applications in the treatment of impairments resulting from neurodegeneration”, he highlights.

In fact, Courtine explains, “this technology was initially intended for pain relief, not for this type of application”, but in the future “we plan to develop a system specifically targeting orthostatic hypotension” to help people who suffer from this disorder.