Musculoskeletal Adaptations in Chronic Spinal Cord Injury: Effects of Long-term Soleus Electrical Stimulation Training

This study explores how long-term electrical stimulation training of a paralyzed calf muscle (soleus) impacts muscle properties and bone density in individuals with chronic spinal cord injury. The research involved men with spinal cord injuries training one leg's soleus muscle with electrical stimulation for about 30 minutes a day, five days a week, over several months, while the other leg served as a control. The study found that this training improved muscle fatigue resistance and contractile work capacity, but did not significantly change bone mineral density in the tibia.

• 1
  Long-term electrical stimulation training of the paralyzed soleus muscle resulted in rapid and prolonged improvement in fatigue resistance.
• 2
  The training also led to improvements in torque-time integral, which is an estimator of contractile work.
• 3
  Proximal tibia bone mineral density, as measured by DEXA, did not significantly change due to the training.