Recent scientific advances are giving hope to spinal cord injury patients

Can those suffering paralysis ever walk again? It may not be as instantaneous as in the Bible - "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk" - but advances in science in the past decade are giving sufferers of spinal cord injury hope for a treatment.

Recently, in findings reported in the medical journal , four young men in the US who had been paralysed for years were able to voluntarily move their legs as a result of epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord.

Closer to home, the China Spinal Cord Injury Network (ChinaSCINet) recently conducted phase-two clinical trials in Hong Kong and Kunming, where umbilical cord blood cells were transplanted together with lithium into people with chronic complete spinal cord injury.

In the Kunming trial, the 20 study subjects, who averaged seven years after complete spinal cord injury, also received intensive walking training for three to six months. After six to 12 months, 15 of the subjects could walk in a rolling device with minimal assistance. Another two subjects could walk without any assistance using a four-point walker.

"A cure for spinal cord injury, while it is not yet available, is conceivable. 'Possible' is a big word," says Dr Gilberto Leung, a doctor in the department of surgery at University of Hong Kong's Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and one of the researchers with ChinaSCINet.

"It very much depends on how you define 'cure'. Partial restoration of body functions after spinal cord injury is possible. It is also important to help patients adapt to disability from the injury. We need to distinguish between 'cure', treatment, management, restoration and rehabilitation."