Serena Donadio
Epidural Spinal Cord Stimulation improves gait kinematics in people with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
Rel. Marco Gazzoni. Politecnico di Torino, Master of science program in Biomedical Engineering, 2023
Abstract
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is a genetic disorder characterized by a spectrum of motor impairments, ranging from infantile onset of severe muscle weakness with respiratory failure to later onset of milder limb weakness and walking impairments (SMA type 3 or 4). While there are pharmaceutical therapies available that can slow the progression of the disease, they do not effectively improve motor deficits, leaving SMA patients significantly impaired. Hence, there is a critical need to develop new combination treatments aimed to improve motor neuron function. Previous experiments conducted in a mouse model have shown that the motor deficit observed in SMA cannot be solely ascribed to spinal motoneurons loss.
Instead, these deficits are associated with a decrease in the firing rate of the surviving motoneurons.This decline in firing rate is due to maladaptive changes in ion channels produced by an insufficient synaptic drive from sensory afferents
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