The broadcaster Andrew Marr is to be injected with drugs in the spine while hanging upside down in a Florida clinic in a “controversial” technique that he hopes will help him recover from a stroke he suffered almost four years ago.
Marr said the treatment, which is known to cost several thousand dollars, would be “my Christmas present to myself”.
In an article for the Spectator, Marr said his January 2013 stroke had left him “semi-paralysed” on his left side and able to walk only “unsteadily and slowly”. Marr, who still presents BBC1’s flagship Sunday political programme, added that he “drops things and takes ages to get dressed”.
He said that as his disability was “a bit of a sod”, he was “inclined to give new treatments a go”.
The treatment, which has yet to be fully tested, has been pioneered by the US doctor Edward Tobinick, who founded the Institute of Neurological Recovery. It involves being injected with etanercept, an anti-inflammatory drug used for arthritis.
Marr said the treatment was controversial. He explained that the drug is injected into the spinal fluid while the patient is upside down so that its large molecules can pass the blood-brain barrier.
“Some people have seen great results, others spit disdain,” he wrote.
He teased readers by adding: “By the time you read this I will know whether it has worked.”
The American Academy of Neurology is sceptical about the treatment. It warns doctors to tell patients that “there is insufficient evidence to determine its effectiveness and that the treatment may be associated with adverse outcomes and high cost”.
It warns that, although no worrying side-effects have been reported so far, “serious adverse events are described in studies of patients receiving etanercept for other conditions”.
They include “congestive heart failure” and “neurologic disorders”.
In a summary of a June 2016 paper published in the journal Neurology it concluded: “Given the limitations of the efficacy of the evidence and the potential for serious adverse events, judge the risk-benefit trade-offs of etanercept for poststroke disability to be unfavourable. As of this writing, the cost of a 25mg vial of etanercept is about $440 in US currency. Additional costs associated with the pretreatment evaluation and administration of perispinal etanercept are likely to be substantially higher.”
