Cycling Therapy Helps Paralyzed

Electrical Stimulation Exercise Offers New Hope For Injured

(AP)  McDonald compared 48 paralyzed adults, half who pedaled an FES bike for at least three hours a week and half who had no special care. The exercise patients increased muscle strength, melted fat, and cut a complication called spasticity, uncontrollable jerks that limit the recovery of those with some movement, he told a neurology meeting last fall.

"These benefits are so big that if that was all they got, it was good enough to do this," McDonald says.

But 40 percent of the exercise group also regained some motor function over three years compared with 4 percent of the "control" patients. It was modest but important improvement: some regained bladder control; some regained useful hand function; some moved from "prewalking," moving their legs while being held up, to taking a few steps.

While McDonald says about 70 rehabilitation centers have adopted FES cycling therapy since a medical journal published his report on Reeve in 2002, other specialists warn that individual successes don't prove recovery is due to a therapy instead of the body's slow healing over time.

"What we have at the moment is an incomplete story that is based upon ... very little data," cautions Dr. Mark S. Nash of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Hence the Shriners study. Although small, with 30 patients, it is the first stringent comparison of FES cycling with passive exercise— someone moving their limbs — or electrical stimulation alone. Early results are expected in a year.

McDonald notes that children in general recover from neural injuries better than adults, and points to remarkable progress by one of his own patients, 15-year-old Loretta McRae.

Paralyzed from the shoulders down after a diving accident in Australia a year ago, Loretta since November has exercised five days a week on the FES bike and with a similar electrical stimulator strapped to her wrists. She now can walk several wobbly feet with a cane, and last week took a few tentative but jubilant steps unassisted. She can go to the bathroom alone. Her hands are unfreezing.

Would Loretta have recovered this much anyway? There's no way to tell, although early return of sensation was a good sign.

But she's not done: "I want to run, and I want to dance."