Facilitatory effects of anti-spastic medication on robotic locomotor training in people with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury

This study investigates if Tizanidine, an anti-spasticity medication, can help people with incomplete spinal cord injuries improve their walking ability when combined with robotic locomotor treadmill training (LTT). The study found that while both LTT alone and LTT with Tizanidine improved walking speed, a higher percentage of people using both treatments showed clinically meaningful improvements. The researchers suggest that Tizanidine might help by improving ankle movement, potentially due to reduced muscle stiffness, especially in those who were already relatively higher functioning.

• 1
  Both LTT and TizLTT resulted in significant improvements in walking speed and dorsiflexion maximum strength, with no significant differences between them, using group-averaging analysis.
• 2
  A higher proportion of subjects in the TizLTT group achieved the MID for walking speed (40%) compared with LTT alone (13%).
• 3
  The change in walking speed was associated with the change in dorsiflexion peak velocity (R2 = 0.40; P < 0.05).