Brain, spinal cord injury patients in Alberta test devices to restore movement

People with brain or spinal cord injuries in Alberta are testing new technologies designed to improve their lives by restoring movement.

Scientists, biomedical engineers, physicians and nurses from Edmonton and Calgary who are working to make paralyzed muscles move will receive $5 million over the next five years from the Alberta Heritage Foundation and the province.

On Monday, Darryl Steeles, who has multiple sclerosis, used a device that works with a leg brace to help him to walk. Electrodes in the device kick his nervous system back into high gear after nine years of destruction from the disease.

"I don't want to get a wheelchair," Steeles said. "I want to walk as far as I can walk when I can walk."

Researchers are working on improving the device, said Prof. Richard Stein, a neuroscientist at the University of Alberta.

"Come back in a couple of years, and we'll be able to get the upper part of the leg working as well," said Stein.

Preventing bedsores

A second device affectionately called "smart underwear" is designed to help prevent pressure ulcers, also known as bedsores, in people with spinal cord injuries. The ulcers cost the health-care system $3.5 billion in Canada, including $475 million in Alberta.

"We sit in front of our computers the whole day and we do not develop a pressure ulcer," explained Prof. Vivian Mushahwar, a specialist in cell biology. "And the reason for that is because we do dynamic relief of pressure by fidgeting."

For Warren Fleury, who can't fidget because of a spinal cord injury he suffered 20 years ago, the smart underwear makes the movements for him.

The computerized device detects when muscles need stimulating. A red light indicates pressure on his buttocks as Fleury sits in a wheelchair, but when the underwear is turned on, the pressure eases.

"I've been trying it, and it seems to be doing pretty good for me right now," said Fleury. "I also have chronic pain with my injury and it also helps kinda [offer] relief for that too, I'm finding."

Researchers hope to take the device to clinical partners next year. More tests are needed, but when the product is ready for consumers, it will sell for $500 to $1,000.

The team is also focused on a research project that aims to create a system that will stimulate small regions of the spinal cord and brain to restore walking, a sense of touch, and the sensations of pressure, movement, temperature and pain for people with injuries, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, or other degenerative diseases.

Study suggests Vitamin D protects against MS

An abundance of vitamin D seems to help prevent multiple sclerosis, according to a study in more than seven million people that offers some of the strongest evidence yet of the power of the "sunshine vitamin" against MS.

The research found that white members of the U.S. military with the highest blood levels of vitamin D were 62 per cent less likely to develop multiple sclerosis than people with low levels.

There was no such connection in blacks or hispanics, possibly because there were so few in the group studied. Also, the body makes vitamin D from sunlight, and the pigmented skin of blacks and other dark-skinned ethnic groups doesn't absorb sunlight as easily as pale skin.

The new research echoes findings in smaller studies that examined why the nerve-damaging disease historically has been more common in people who live in regions farther from the equator where there is less intense year-round sunlight.

"This is the first large prospective study where blood levels are measured in young adults and compared to their future risk. It's definitely different and much stronger evidence," said Dr. Alberto Ascherio, the senior author and an associate professor of nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health.

The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"If confirmed, this finding suggests that many cases of MS could be prevented by increasing vitamin D levels," Ascherio said.

Still, he said the findings don't prove that a lack of vitamin D can cause MS, so it's too preliminary to recommend that people take vitamin D pills to avoid the disease.

Vitamin D is also found in fortified milk and oily fish, but it's hard to get enough just from diet. Sunlight is the biggest source of vitamin D, which is needed for strong bones.

Other studies have linked high levels of vitamin D in the blood to lower risks of a variety of cancers.

The MS researchers worked with the U.S. army and navy in analyzing blood samples of military personnel stored by the Department of Defence.

Vitamin deficiency in young people

Military databases showed that 257 service men and women were diagnosed with MS between 1992 and 2004. The increased MS risk was especially strong in people who were younger than 20 when they entered the study. The researchers said that finding suggests that vitamin D exposure before adulthood could be particularly important.

Using blood samples to measure vitamin D levels "tends to nail it down in a much more reliable way" than studies that have relied on people's memories of vitamin D exposure, said Dr. Nicholas LaRocca of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

MS is among the most common nerve disorders affecting young adults, mostly women. Canada has the highest incidence in the world at 240 cases among every 100,000 people, according to a study by a University of Calgary team published in the journal Multiple Sclerosis in 2005.

Around two million people worldwide have MS, a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the fatty insulation that surrounds nerve fibres.

Ascherio said there's some evidence that its incidence is increasing in sunny regions including the South and West, possibly because people are avoiding the sun or using sunscreen to protect against skin cancer.

Some doctors think those practices also have contributed to vitamin D deficiencies in adolescents and young adults.

"There's no question that vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic in the United States," said Dr. William Finn, a vitamin D expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The MS study "is just one more reason to pay attention to it."

MS symptoms vary but can be disabling and can include tingling pain in the arms and legs, fatigue and vision problems.

Doctors believe it is genetic and perhaps triggered in susceptible people by environmental causes, including possibly some viruses. Vitamin D deficiency could be another trigger.

It's unclear how lack of vitamin D might contribute. In mouse experiments, the vitamin stimulated production of chemicals that fight an MS-like disease.