Novel spatiotemporal analysis of gait changes in body weight supported treadmill trained rats following cervical spinal cord injury.

This was a rat study, not a human trial, so it does not show what body-weight-supported treadmill training does for patients. The paper did not describe randomisation or blinding for assigning rats to trained or untrained groups. The trained and untrained groups were small. Some animals were part of ongoing studies and had been reported previously. The new analysis compares whole steps and cannot say which single gait feature caused a difference. The device recorded only hindlimb ankle position, not forelimb stepping or interlimb coordination. The significance threshold came from the authors' healthy rat model, not from patient-level standards.

Funding came from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. The paper does not report competing interests.

Do not conclude that body-weight-supported treadmill training improves walking after spinal cord injury. In rats, the more impaired hindlimb looked better only while body weight support was on, and trained rats stepped worse than untrained rats when support was removed.