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[00:00.45] Marc Gauthier has Parkinson’s disease.

[00:04.74] The disease affects his nervous system, weakens his muscles and causes his arms and legs to shake.

[00:13.80] The 63-year-old Gauthier had not been able to leave his home for some time.

[00:20.99] But that was until he became the first person to receive a new Swiss-designed medical device that greatly improved his ability to walk.

[00:35.08] Gauthier received a medical device called a neuroprosthetic at Switzerland’s Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV).

[00:47.08] Part of the device, called an electrode field, is placed against part of the nervous system which runs in the back called the spinal cord.

[01:00.98] Another part of the device, found under his skin below the stomach, uses electricity to stimulate the spinal cord to start up his leg muscles.

[01:15.11] It is called an electrical impulse generator.

[01:19.91] "It changed my life because I'm now independent," said Gauthier, a native of the French city of Bordeaux, as he sat with his doctors at CHUV.

[01:34.35] "I can leave my home, run errands.

[01:37.83] I even go on foot."

[01:41.05] The number of people affected by Parkinson’s disease has doubled over the past 25 years, the World Health Organization found.

[01:54.66] Worldwide estimates showed that more than 8.5 million people suffered from the disease in 2019.

[02:06.65] Grégoire Courtine is one of the doctors leading the project.

[02:13.05] He said the electrical pulses delivered to Gauthier’s spinal cord has permitted him to walk the way he would have without the disease.

[02:26.39] "We strongly believe that many individuals could benefit from this therapy," said Courtine.

[02:35.50] He is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Lausanne and CHUV.

[02:48.87] The study was published in Nature Medicine recently.

[02:54.19] The findings by Courtine’s team at the NeuroRestore research center suggest the technology could be used more widely in patients with more progressed Parkinson’s.

[03:10.25] Many of those with more progressed, or advanced, Parkinson’s have severe problems with being able to move.

[03:21.44] Dave Marver is chief executive officer of Onward Medical, which designed the medical device.

[03:31.60] He said that the device was similar to another device called an implantable defibrillator and those used to deal with pain.

[03:43.62] But he added the device is special in the way that it targets the spinal cord.

[03:50.55] "For the health care system, it will look and feel familiar, but it will offer therapy that doesn't exist today," he said.

[04:01.21] Courtine’s team plans to carry out continuing researching and test the device on six new patients next year.

[04:12.43] Jocelyne Bloch is the doctor who performed the operation on Gauthier and co-director of NeuroRestore.

[04:22.83] She said with this therapy, if people can gain belief in themselves and can go out, socialize and do more things, it is a big plus “… in their daily activities and quality of life.”