Researchers working with the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam implanted a small electrical stimulator on the vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem to the gut, in patients with rheumatoid arthritis that had not responded well to standard drugs.
In this pilot study of 17 patients, who stayed on methotrexate, stimulating the vagus nerve for a few minutes a day cut the TNF their blood cells released in lab tests and lowered disease activity scores, in 12 of 17 enough to count as a clinical response. No new drug was added.
The approach built on decades of laboratory work showing the vagus nerve can dial down inflammation through a pathway researchers call the inflammatory reflex. The study was small and open-label, without a separate control group receiving sham stimulation, so larger randomized trials were needed before the approach could be considered a real alternative to standard arthritis drugs.
Read the original study
Koopman et al., PNAS, 2016 · doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605635113
A nerve signal joined the treatment.
Source
- Koopman, F. A., Chavan, S. S., Miljko, S., Grazio, S., Sokolovic, S., Schuurman, P. R., Mehta, A. D., Levine, Y. A., Faltys, M., Zitnik, R., Tracey, K. J., & Tak, P. P. (2016). Vagus nerve stimulation inhibits cytokine production and attenuates disease severity in rheumatoid arthritis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(29), 8284–8289. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605635113