The use of a spinal cord stimulation (SCS) device has the potential to gradually reawaken functionally silent motor neurons and improve leg muscle strength in patients living with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) in a pilot clinical trial.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study (NCT05430113) examined the use of Medtronic’s Vectris SureScan device in three SMA patients with all of them able to increase their six-minute walk test (6MWT) score, a measure of estimating muscle fatigue, by at least 20 metres after three months.
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The study’s early results have now been published in the journal Nature Medicine, as the university claims that its study is the first to demonstrate how SCS can reverse the degeneration of neural pathways.
Elvira Pirondini, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the university and corresponding author of the study, said: “Because SMA is a progressive disease, patients do not expect to get better as time goes on. But that is not what we saw in our study.
“Over the four weeks of treatment, our study participants improved in several clinical outcomes with improvements in activities of daily living. For instance, toward the end of the study, one patient reported being able to walk from their home to the lab without becoming tired.”
As part of the trial, researchers enrolled three adults with milder forms of SMA (Type 3 or 4 SMA). Over the 29-day study period, the three patients had electrodes implanted into their lower backs aimed towards the roots of sensory nerves. Additionally, the trial saw no adverse events (AEs).
Robert Friedlander, chair of neurological surgery at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine, commented: “Our results suggest that this neurostimulation approach could be broadly applied to treat other neurodegenerative diseases beyond SMA, such as ALS or Huntington’s disease, as long as appropriate cell targets are identified in the course of future research.”
The University has plans to launch another clinical trial in SMA patients to test the long-term efficacy and safety of electrical SCS.
GlobalData’s Medical Devices Database details how the global market for neuromodulation devices saw sales of $6.4bn by the end of last year. Of that market, SCS devices comprise approximately $2.3bn, which is expected to rise to $3.4bn by the end of 2030.
GlobalData is the parent company of Clinical Trials Arena.
The news follows after SCS devices drew controversy in Australia after research from the University of Sydney cast doubt on the effectiveness of the devices for the treatment of pain, prompting national authorities to pull some devices from shelves.
Elsewhere in the world of SCS devices, US-based device company Nevro has secured market authorisation from the European Union (EU) for its HFX iQ SCS system.
