NEW YORK—If you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, you might be glad to know that research on using electricity to treat this debilitating disease is set to begin clinical trials later this year in the United States.
For nearly 20 years, researchers at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., have been studying how electricity can be delivered automatically through the nervous system directly to organs in the body for treatment of inflammatory diseases, with minimal side effects.
Called bioelectronic medicine, this emerging therapy requires implanting an electrical device about the size of the tip of your pinky beneath the skin and onto the vagus nerve, a cranial nerve that runs from the brainstem to the abdomen and is commonly used in nerve stimulation treatments for brain disorders.
The device was developed by SetPoint Medical, a biomedical technology company based in Valencia, Calif. It is designed to deliver programmed electrical impulses directly to the spleen, a key immune organ.
If the trials are successful, patients might not have to remember to take pills anymore.
How Nerves Communicate With Organs
Other nerve stimulation devices have been in use for years to treat diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s, and these devices use the vagus nerve to send signals directly to the brain.
But the brain also uses the vagus nerve to send electrical signals to the body.
“There are two branches of the vagus, one on each side of your neck,” said Chris Czura, Ph.D., vice president of scientific affairs and an investigator at the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institute.
But the main branch of the vagus nerve runs “from the base of your brain, through your neck, through your chest, and into your abdomen,” he said.
It touches major organs along the way to the abdomen. “For example it [the vagus nerve] goes to the heart, to the lungs and from there it begins to branch to the spleen, to the intestines, to the liver, to the kidneys,” he said.
But when the brain’s signals through the vagus nerve stop working adequately, your immune system acts abnormally, leading to chronic inflammation.
Among other things, chronic inflammation erodes joints making movement agonizing, and leading to rheumatoid arthritis.
