A team of scientists in Switzerland have successfully helped paralysed rats walk and even climbing stairs, giving hope for a treatment for the illness for humans.

The team was able to stimulate nerves to make it grow around the grow around damage in the spinal cord in order to allow the animals to move legs. They directly injected the chemicals into the spinal cord and stimulated the nerves with electrical impulses.

Dr Gregoire Courtine of the EPFL research group in Lausanne said, “Our rats have become athletes when just weeks before they were completely paralysed. I am talking about 100% recuperation of voluntary movement.”

The animals were trained to walk again in a specially designed harness. The harness supported them if they fell and the rats were required to show will power to reach a piece of chocolate. The research is a new effort n the field and would give hope to people who are unable to move.

The treatment was able to increase growth of new nerve fibres, which are able to carry signals from the brain, four times. Dr Courtine further said that the rats slowly regained capacity to sprint, climb stairs, even pass obstacles.

The scientist are hoping to begin clinical trials on paralysed patients "within a year or two" at the Balgrist University Hospital Spinal Cord Injury Centre in Zurich.

The research is published in the journal Science.