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Palliative Strategies in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)

NCT00594178 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 17

Last updated 2011-01-13

Study results available
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Summary

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to muscle atrophy, hyperreflexia and spasticity, symptoms that decrease quality of life and prevent effective rehabilitation. Previous findings from our labs found that a passive cycling exercise program, motorized bicycle exercise training (MBET), in adult spinally transected animals reduced muscle atrophy and normalized hyperreflexia. We found that MBET could prevent the onset of hyperreflexia after spinal transaction, that MBET could also be used to rescue from hyperreflexia once it had set in, and that MBET could induce savings in normalization of reflexes after MBET ceased. We also demonstrated that MBET was effective in rescuing from hyperreflexia in a chronic ASIA B SCI patient, and that short-term MBET could lead to brief savings in normalization of reflexes once MBET ceased. The proposed studies will test the ability to MBET to prevent the onset of hyperreflexia in a group of acute SCI patients trained before hyperreflexia has had a chance to set in. In addition, the proposed research will attempt to confirm the possibility that long-term MBET in chronic SCI patients will rescue from hyperreflexia once it has set in, and also produce significant savings in normalization of reflexes if carried out for long periods of time. We will also test the possibility that MBET in acute and/or chronic SCI patients could reduce or prevent muscle atrophy. The experimental design calls for assessing muscle mass using MRI scans, bone density using Dual-Energy X-ray Absortiometry (DEXA) scans, spasticity measures and electrophysiological measurements to determine low frequency habituation of the H-reflex. Assessments will be carried out before MBET, during a 25 week MBET block of time, and during a 12 week post MBET monitoring period. Changes in muscle mass, bone density, spasticity scales and H-reflex habituation will be compared across these interventions and between treated SCI victims and a group of control acute and chronic SCI victims undergoing standard of care during the same period.

Conditions

  • Spinal Cord Injury

Interventions

DEVICE

Motorized bicycle exercise training

Passive exercise with a bicycle to bilateral legs. 5 days per week for 3 months

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Arkansas

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Thomas S. Kiser, MD · Center for Translational Neuroscience, UAMS

  • Edgar Garcia-Rill, PhD · Center for Translational Neuroscience, UAMS

Study Design

Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
70 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2003-10-31
Primary Completion
2008-07-31
Completion
2010-09-30

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00594178 on ClinicalTrials.gov