Development and deployment of an at-home strength and conditioning program to support a phase I trial in persons with chronic spinal cord injury

Abstract

Study design: Nonrandomized clinical trial (NCT02354625).

Objectives: As a part of a Phase I clinical trial to assess the safety of autologous human Schwann cells (ahSC) in persons with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI), participants engaged in a multimodal conditioning program pre- and post-ahSC transplantation. The program included a home-based strength and endurance training program to prevent lack of fitness and posttransplantation detraining from confounding potential ahSC therapeutic effects. This paper describes development, deployment, outcomes, and challenges of the home-based training program.

Setting: University-based laboratory.

Methods: Development phase: two men with paraplegia completed an 8-week laboratory-based 'test' of the home-based program. Deployment phase: the first four (two males, two females) participant cohort of the ahSC trial completed the program at home for 12 weeks pre and 20 weeks post ahSC transplant.

Results: Development phase: both participants improved their peak aerobic capacity (VO_2peak) (≥17%), peak power output (PO_peak) (≥8%), and time to exhaustion (TTE) (≥7%). Deployment phase: pretransplant training minimally increased fitness in the two male participants (≥6% PO_peak and ≥9% TTE). The two women had no PO_peak changes and slight TTE changes (+2.6 and -1.2%, respectively.) All four participants detrained during the posttransplant recovery period. After posttransplant retraining, all four participants increased TTE (4-24%), three increased VO_2peak (≥11%), and two increased PO_peak (≥7%)_. CONCLUSIONS: Home-based strength and condition programs can be effective and successfully included in therapeutic SCI trials. However, development of these programs requires substantial content knowledge and experience.