Writing in this month's Spinal Cord, a team of UK doctors describe how patients with incomplete spinal cord injuries received repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), leading to improvements in their ability to move muscles and limbs, and ability to feel sensations.

rTMS uses an electromagnet placed on the scalp to generate brief magnetic pulses, about the strength of an MRI scan, which stimulate the part of the brain called the cerebral cortex. Incomplete spinal cord injuries are a type of spinal injury where the spinal cord has not been entirely severed, but the patient has still lost the ability to move or feel properly below the injury point.

Dr Nick Davey from Imperial College London and Charing Cross Hospital, and one of the study's authors, says: "Through rTMS we may be able to help people who have suffered partial injuries to the spinal cord recover some of their movement and feeling. We think it works by strengthening the information leaving the brain through the undamaged neurons in the spinal cord. It may work like physiotherapy but instead of repeating a physical task, the machine activates the surviving nerves to strengthen their connections."

The researchers from Imperial College London, the National Spinal Injuries Centre, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, UK, and Charing Cross Hospital, UK, tested rTMS on four patients with incomplete spinal injuries. The patients had all sustained their injuries at least 18 months previously and had already received conventional rehabilitation including physiotherapy. They were all considered stable in that they were no longer undergoing natural improvement. The patients received both real and sham rTMS treatment over a three-week period. The rTMS treatment involved five consecutive days of
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Contact: Tony Stephenson
at.stephenson@imperial.ac.uk
44-207-594-6712
Imperial College London
10-May-2004