Reacción a "Deep brain stimulation improves walking after spinal cord injury"

The press release accurately reflects the study, which is of high quality, and its conclusions are supported by solid data.

The research team led by Grégoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch in Lausanne, Switzerland, has been working intensely for decades to understand the impact of spinal cord injury on neural circuits and identify therapeutic targets for motor function recovery. In this study, the team identifies a specific region in the brain, the lateral hypothalamus, involved in spontaneous recovery processes after spinal cord injury using various mouse and rat injury models. This is an extraordinary discovery in the field, as this specific brain area had not previously been associated with walking. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of this specific brain region leads to immediate and long-term improvements in walking, both in rodent models and in two patients with chronic spinal cord injury.

As the authors themselves point out, this is just the beginning. Among other things, it will be necessary to verify the short-, medium-, and long-term impact of deep brain stimulation while ruling out severe adverse effects associated with the application of this therapy.

This is undoubtedly another significant achievement by Courtine and Bloch's team in the quest for therapeutic solutions to restore motor function in patients with spinal cord injuries. Although it is still uncertain when and how these advances will reach patients with spinal cord injuries, it is impossible not to feel hopeful about achievements as promising as those described in this article.