Preprint Brief Report Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Transcutaneous Spinal Cord Stimulation Facilitates Respiratory Functional Performance in Patients with Post-acute COVID-19

Alexander Ovechkin
* ORCID logo ,
Tatiana Moshonkina
ORCID logo ,
Natalia Shandybina
,
Vsevolod Lyakhovetskii
ORCID logo ,
Ruslan Gorodnichev
,
Sergey Moiseev
,
Ricardo Siu
ORCID logo ,
Yury Gerasimenko
Version 1 : Received: 19 June 2023 / Approved: 20 June 2023 / Online: 20 June 2023 (08:30:47 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Ovechkin, A.; Moshonkina, T.; Shandybina, N.; Lyakhovetskii, V.; Gorodnichev, R.; Moiseev, S.; Siu, R.; Gerasimenko, Y. Transcutaneous Spinal Cord Stimulation Facilitates Respiratory Functional Performance in Patients with Post-Acute COVID-19. Life 2023, 13, 1563. Ovechkin, A.; Moshonkina, T.; Shandybina, N.; Lyakhovetskii, V.; Gorodnichev, R.; Moiseev, S.; Siu, R.; Gerasimenko, Y. Transcutaneous Spinal Cord Stimulation Facilitates Respiratory Functional Performance in Patients with Post-Acute COVID-19. Life 2023, 13, 1563.

Abstract

Background: A growing number of studies have reported Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-related to both respiratory and central nervous system dysfunctions. This study evaluates the neuromodulatory effects of spinal cord transcutaneous stimulation (scTS) on the respiratory functional state in healthy controls and patients with post-COVID-19 respiratory deficits as a step toward the development of a rehabilitation strategy for these patients.; Methods: In this before-after, interventional, case-controlled clinical study, ten individuals with post-acute COVID-19 respiratory deficits and eight healthy controls received a single twenty-minute-long session of modulated monophasic scTS delivered over the T5 and T10 spinal cord segments. Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), Peak Forced Inspiratory Flow (PIF), Peak Expiratory Flow (PEF), Time-To-Peak of Inspiratory Flow (tPIF), and Time-To-Peak of Expiratory Flow (tPEF) were assessed before and after the intervention; Results: In COVID-19 group, the scTS intervention led to significantly increased PIF (p= .040) and PEF (p= .049) in association with significantly decreased tPIF (p= .035) and tPEF (p= .013). In the Control Group, the exposure to scTS also resulted in significantly increased PIF (p= .010) and significantly decreased tPIF (p= .031). Unlike the results in COVID-19 group, there was significantly decreased PEF (p= .028) in association with significantly increased tPEF (p= .036). There were no changes for FVC after scTS in both groups (p= .67 and p= .503); Conclusions: In post-COVID-19 patients scTS facilitates excitation of both inspiratory and expiratory spinal neural networks leading to an immediate improvement of respiratory functional performance. This neuromodulation approach could be utilized in rehabilitation programs for patients with COVID-19 respiratory deficits.

Keywords

Neuromodulation; Spinal cord stimulation; Respiration; Rehabilitation; COVID-19

Subject

Medicine and Pharmacology, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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