PEOPLE who have suffered partial damage to their spinal cord may be helped by applying a magnetic therapy to their brain.

Dr Maurizio Belci, part of the research team, with a control subject undergoing technical testing

A team of UK doctors have discovered how patients with incomplete spinal cord injuries benefited from repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) which led to improvements in their ability to move muscles and limbs, as well as their ability to feel sensations.

Incomplete spinal cord injuries are a type of spinal injury where the spinal cord has not been entirely severed, but the patient has still lost the ability to move or feel properly below the injury point.

Writing in Spinal Cord, the doctors describe how rTMS uses an electromagnet placed on the scalp to generate brief magnetic pulses about the strength of an MRI scan, which stimulate the cerebral cortex. A treatment designed to treat psychiatric disorders, rTMS has been used in treating some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Dr Nick Davey, Charing Cross campus and one of the study's authors, says: "Through rTMS, which we believe strengthens the information leaving the brain through the undamaged neurons in the spinal cord, we may be able to help sufferers recover some of their movement and feeling.

"It may work like physiotherapy but instead of repeating a physical task, the machine activates the surviving nerves to strengthen their connections."

Researchers from Imperial, the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and Charing Cross campus, tested rTMS on four patients with incomplete spinal injuries. All had sustained their injuries at least 18 months previously and had already received conventional rehabilitation including physiotherapy.

Patients received both real and sham (simulated) rTMS treatment during a three-week period which involved five consecutive days of magnetic stimulation for one hour per day, resulting in a 37.5 per cent drop in intracortical inhibition, compared with normal physiotherapy, making it easier for messages from the brain to pass down the spinal cord to the rest of the body.

Motor and sensory function also improved, lasting for at least three weeks after treatment.

The work was supported by the International Spinal Research Trust.

Dr Davey and his team have received a further grant to carry out larger trials in this field.