Paralysed man walks again: pioneering treatment could help stroke victims

Now we have shown we can do it, not only in rats but in one man, theres no reason to restrict this to spinal cord. We have opened the door to a future which is terrifyingly large.

We have knowledge which could be of great value, we cant stop now, he said.

Prof Raisman said he thought the procedure could pave the way for mass treatment of spinal cord injuries, but cautioned: Whether I am right or wrong has to be proved and will be proved first in the first stage by us; we have to repeat this.

He said he was absolutely frightened by the huge potential of the treatment and now had a responsibility to see if the treatment could indeed be used to help others.

Darek Fidyka. (Photo: BBC)

John Haycock, a Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield, said: It paves the way for cell-based therapies in conditions of the nervous system previously thought impossible to treat, not just spinal cord injuries but other conditions such as stroke.

This is however early days, and much more research on how effective and reproducible this treatment is will be needed for many years to come.

However, Dr Simone Di Giovanni, Chair in Restorative Neuroscience, Imperial College London, warned against giving false hope to patients, pointing out that after just one operation it was not even possible to prove cause and effect.

A one case of a patient improving neurological impairment after spinal cord knife injury following nerve and olfactory cell transplantation is simply anecdotal and cannot represent any solid scientific evidence to elaborate upon. In fact, there is no evidence that the transplant is responsible for the reported neurological improvement, he said.

The use of these cells for spinal cord injury repair have been implemented for 30 years now with very controversial results in rodents, non-human primates and patients. Extreme caution should be used when communicating these findings to the public in order not to elicit false expectations on people who already suffer because of their highly invalidating medical condition.

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Paralysed man walks again: pioneering treatment could help stroke victims