Researchers at EPFL and Lausanne University Hospital had used targeted spinal stimulation to help people paralyzed by spinal injury walk again. They adapted the technology, first tested in monkeys with Parkinson's-like symptoms, for a man whose gait freezing no longer responded to medication or deep brain stimulation.
The team implanted an electrode array over the spinal cord of a 62-year-old man with 30 years of Parkinson's disease, stimulating leg-controlling nerves in a pattern timed to his own walking rhythm. Combined with his deep brain stimulator and medication, his freezing episodes dropped and his steps grew longer and steadier, gains that held for nearly two years.
This result comes from a single patient, and the device must be custom-tuned to each person's walking pattern, making it unclear how practical it would be to scale beyond specialized surgical centers. The same group is now testing the approach in more patients, building on the primate research that proved the concept before any human received the implant.
Read the original study
Milekovic et al., Nature Medicine, 2023 · doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02584-1
A single patient's freezing eased.
Source
- Milekovic, T., Moraud, E. M., Macellari, N., Moerman, C., Raschellà, F., Sun, S., Perich, M. G., Varescon, C., Demesmaeker, R., Bruel, A., Bole-Feysot, L. N., Schiavone, G., Pirondini, E., YunLong, C., Hao, L., Galvez, A., Hernandez-Charpak, S. D., Dumont, G., Ravier, J., . . . Courtine, G. (2023). A spinal cord neuroprosthesis for locomotor deficits due to Parkinson's disease. Nature Medicine, 29(11), 2854–2865. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02584-1