Not yet established care
Research-stage treatments
This page cuts across the others. Whatever a treatment is made of — cells, light, peptides or a named physiotherapy approach — what matters to a family deciding whether to pay for it is how far the evidence has actually got. Everything here is still being worked out.
Research-stage does not mean worthless, and it does not mean proven. It means the question is open. A treatment in registered clinical trials is being tested properly and the answer is coming; a treatment with only early research behind it is being offered ahead of its evidence; and a few have been tested and not supported. Those are three very different positions, so they are set out separately below.
In clinical trials
Under formal investigation, with registered protocols and published results. If your child fits the entry criteria, a trial is usually the best way to access these — it is supervised, it is monitored, and it is free.
Stem cell therapy
In clinical trialsMagnetic stimulation
In clinical trialsTechnology-assisted rehabilitation
In clinical trialsNamed physiotherapy approaches
In clinical trialsSensory therapies
In clinical trialsBobath / NDT
In clinical trialsConductive education
Early research only
Laboratory work, animal studies, small uncontrolled series or case reports. This is the group most often sold to families as though it were treatment. The honest position on all of it is that nobody yet knows whether it changes a child’s outcome.
Exosomes
The cell-free next step after stem cells, with genuinely interesting laboratory science — and, in children, almost no controlled clinical evidence at all.
Extracellular vesicles, MSC-derived EVs
Early research onlyMuse cells
A distinct cell type with an unusual property — it appears to home to damaged tissue on its own — and an unusually small amount of clinical evidence, almost none of it in children.
Multilineage-differentiating Stress Enduring cells
Early research onlyPhotobiomodulation
Non-invasive, painless and inexpensive compared with cell therapies — with small, mostly short studies behind it and a wide gap between what is claimed and what has been shown.
Transcranial near-infrared light, low-level laser therapy, PBM
Early research onlyPeptide preparations
Two quite different things share this word: prescription neuropeptide preparations used routinely in some countries, and an unregulated wellness trade. Neither has good evidence in children.
Cerebrolysin, Cortexin, Semax, and “peptide therapy” sold by wellness clinics
Early research onlyMedicinal mushrooms and nootropics
A research band worth watching, and a supplement shelf to approach carefully. Some of these compounds have real laboratory interest; almost none has been tested in children with neurological conditions.
Lion's mane (Hericium erinaceus), reishi, cordyceps, citicoline, piracetam, psilocybin
Early research onlyMEDEK / CME
A deliberately provocative, gravity-based approach that draws strong loyalty from families and has almost no controlled evidence behind it.
Cuevas MEDEK Exercises, Dynamic Method of Kinetic Stimulation
Early research onlyMAES therapy
Theoretically the most modern of the named approaches — it is built on current motor-learning thinking — and the one with the least published evidence, because it is also the newest.
Mobilisation of Awareness, Exploration and Strategies
Early research onlyAnat Baniel Method
Gentle, attention-focused movement work with a clear conceptual framework, a devoted following, and no controlled trial evidence of functional benefit in children.
NeuroMovement, ABM, Feldenkrais-derived
Early research onlyVojta therapy
Pressure applied at defined body points to trigger whole-body movement patterns. Long-established in some countries, little tested, and the child's distress is a serious part of the discussion.
Reflex locomotion
Tested and not supported
These have had their chance. Where a treatment has been studied and the evidence came back negative, that is a result in itself — and a reason to spend the time and money elsewhere.
How to judge a therapy sets out the questions that separate a treatment worth trying from one worth declining, and Safety covers what can actually go wrong.