Could a tiny electronic device handle some diseases safer and more effectively than pharmaceuticals?
For Kelly Owens, the answer was clear. She spent more than a decade suffering from Crohn’s disease, an infectious breast disease that left her with severe arthritis in the joints. The pain forced her to use a canister, sometimes a wheelchair. She tried more than 20 medications and raised more than $ 1 million in medical bills, but her condition did not improve.
A doctor told Owens and her husband that they should not have children, and that she had to take steroids for life.
Owens then turned to bioelectronic medicine. She reached out to Dr. Kevin Tracey, pioneer in the field and president and President of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York. Shortly afterwards, Owens and her husband moved to Amsterdam to take part in a clinical trial involving a relatively new bioelectronic method for the treatment of inflammation.
Doctors inserted a small electronic device into her chest that stimulated her vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body. After two weeks, Owens didn’t need the cannon or the wheelchair. Soon she was moving on a treadmill.
A growing body of research within bioelectronic medicine is showing that it is possible to treat diseases by manipulating the nervous system. The field is largely a combination of neurology, molecular biology and neurotechnology. Dr. Tracey and his colleagues believe that the field could once have used many prescription drugs to treat major diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s.
But how? The answer is based on how the nervous system controls molecular processes in the body.
… the most advanced aspect of bioelectronic therapy, according to Dr. Tracey, is that procedures such as vagus nerve stimulation do not come with harmful and potentially fatal side effects, as do many prescription drugs. medical treatment at present.
Old reflexes of the nervous system
You accidentally put your hand on a hot stove. Almost immediately, your hand pulls back.
What prompted your hand to move? The answer is no that you have consciously decided that the stove was hot and you should move your hand. Instead, it was a reflex: Skin receptors on your hand sent zero impulses to the spinal cord, which sent back motor neurons that made your hand move away. This all happened before your “sensory brain” understood what had happened.
Similarly, the nervous system has reflexes that protect individual cells in the body.
“The nervous system has evolved because we need to address stimuli in the environment,” Dr. Tracey said. “Natural signals do not come from the brain down first. Instead, when something happens in the environment, our peripheral nervous system senses it and sends a signal to the central nervous system, which causes into the brain and spine. And then the nervous system responds to correct the problem. “
So what if scientists could “slow down” into the nervous system, manipulating electrical activity in the nervous system to control molecular processes and achieve desirable results ? That is the main goal of bioelectronic therapy.
“There are billions of neurons in the body that interact with almost every cell in the body, and at each of these zero endings, molecular signals control molecular mechanisms that can interpret and map, and potentially be controlled, “Dr Tracey said in a TED speech.
“Many of these devices are also involved in important diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, hip tolerance and panic. It is highly plausible that there will be promises in detection. some medicine today to detect these diseases.
How can scientists hack the nervous system? For years, researchers in the field of bioelectronic medicine have delved into the longest cranial nerve in the body: the vagus nerve.
Furthermore, clinical trials show that vagus nerve stimulation not only “shuts off” inflammation, but also stimulates cell production that promotes healing.
An nerve vagus
Electrical signals, seen here in a synapse, travel throughout the vagus nerve to stimulate an inflammatory response.
Credit: Adobe Stock via solvod
The vagus nerve (“vagus” means “wandering” in Latin) consists of two zero fingers that extend from the brain system down to the chest and abdomen, where neural fibers organ connection. Electrical signals constantly travel up and down the vagus nerve, enabling communication between the brain and other parts of the body. One part of this communication is back and forth inflammation. When the immune system detects an injury or attack, it automatically stimulates an inflammatory response, which helps heal injuries and attack invaders. But when not used properly, inflammation can become excessive, exacerbating a problem and potentially contributing to infections. In 2002, Dr. Tracey and his colleagues discovered that the nervous system plays a key role in monitoring and altering inflammation. This happens through a process called the inflammatory reflex. Simply put, it works like this: When the nervous system detects inflammatory stimuli, it flexibly (and subconsciously) uses electrical signals through the vagus nerve that stimulate anti-inflammatory molecular processes. In rodent tests, Dr. Tracey and his colleagues observed that electrical signals travel through the vagus nerve controlling TNF, a protein that, above all, causes inflammation. These electrical signals travel through the vagus nerve to the spleen. There, electrical signals are converted to chemical signals, triggering a molecular process that eventually produces TNF, which worsens conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. The remarkable chain reaction of the inflammatory reflex was observed by Drs. Tracey and his colleagues more closely through rodent tests. When inflammatory stimuli are detected, the nervous system sends electrical signals that travel through the vagus nerve to the spleen. There, the electrical signals are converted to chemical signals, which stimulate the spleen to form a white blood cell called a T cell, which then produces a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. The acetylcholine interacts with macrophages, which are a specific type of white blood cell that produces TNF, a protein that, above all, causes inflammation. At that point, the acetylcholine causes the macrophages to stop producing too much TNF – or inflammation. Results showed that when a particular part of the body is inflamed, certain fibers inside the vagus nerve begin to burn. Dr. was able to Tracey and his colleagues map these relationships. More importantly, they were able to stimulate specific parts of the vagus nerve to “shut off” inflammation. Furthermore, clinical trials show that vagus nerve stimulation not only “shuts off” inflammation, but also stimulates cell production that promotes healing. “In animal testing, we understand how this works,” Dr. Tracey said. “And now we have clinical trials showing that the human response is what is expected in the laboratory tests. A lot of scientific thresholds have been crossed in the clinic and in the laboratory. We are literally at the degree stage and regulatory standards, followed by marketing and distribution before this idea takes off. “
The future of bioelectronic medicine
Vagus nerve stimulation can already treat Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory diseases. In the future, it can also be used to treat cancer, diabetes and depression.
Credit: Adobe Stock via Maridav
Vaginal nerve stimulation is currently awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but to date, it has been proven safe and effective in clinical trials on humans. Dr Tracey said vagus nerve stimulation could become a common treatment for a wide range of diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, diabetes, panic, depression and diabetes. “To the extent that inflammation is the problem in the disease, then stop inflammation or stop the inflammation by vagus nerve stimulation or beneficial bioelectronic techniques and therapeutic, “he said. A zero vagus stimulus would require you to have an electronic device, about the size of a lima woman, suddenly inserted into your neck during a 30-minute procedure. . Weeks later, you would visit, say, your rheumatologist, who would activate the device and decide on the correct dosage. The stimulus would take a few minutes each day, and would seem unrecognizable. But the most advanced thing about bioelectronic medicine, according to Dr. Tracey, is that procedures like vagus nerve stimulation would not come with harmful and potentially fatal side effects, as many prescription drugs do. do it right now. ”A zero-dose device will not have as many systemic adverse effects on the body as steroids do,” Dr. Tracey said. “It’s a powerful concept that scientists are, in fact, accepting – it’s amazing. But the idea of taking this into action is going to take another 10 or 20 years, as it is difficult for doctors, who have spent their lives writing prescriptions for pills or injections. , that a computer chip can replace the drug. “But patients may be involved in advancing bioelectronic therapy.” There is a huge demand in this patient group for something better than what they are taking now, “said Dr. Tracey.” Patients do not want to take a drug with a black box warning, costing $ 100,000 a year and working half the time. “Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, explained:” Why would patients follow a drug record when they could choose a few electronic shots? A is it possible that treatments like this, pulses through electronic devices, could replace some drugs in the years to come as their favorite treatments? Tracey believes that there is, and perhaps that is why pharmaceutical industry closely follows its work. ”Over the long term, bioelectronic approaches are unlikely to completely replace pharmaceutical drugs, but they could add a lot. instead, or at least the cleac as remedial remedies.Dr. Tracey is optimistic about the future of the field. “It is going to seed a large new industry that will compete with the pharmaceutical industry in the next 50 years,” he said. “This is no longer a start-up business. […] It is going to be very interesting to see the explosive growth that is about to take place. “