The leading cause of death worldwide is chronic inflammatory
diseases. When the body is inflamed and under stress for long
periods of time, the body’s heart rate increases, increasing the
risk of fatality. A new study published in Brain, Behavior and
Immunity by The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research
researchers shows that stimulation of the brainstem region where
the vagus nerve originates, could help reduce inflammation and
heart rate, and improve survival. This preclinical research opens
new therapeutic avenues to address inflammation, and in turn, find
ways to suppress heart rate by using vagus nerve stimulation in the
brainstem.
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The Feinstein Institutes’ Dr. Valentin
Pavlov and Dr. Aidan Falvey led the study. (Credit: Feinstein
Institutes)
The study, led by Valentin Pavlov, PhD, professor, and Aidan
Falvey, PhD, research scientist, both in the Institute of
Bioelectronic Medicine, stimulated the vagus nerve in the brainstem
of mice with inflammation. The results show that this stimulation
could lower heart rate and reduce inflammation significantly. They
also found that even a regimen of stimulation, which does not
affect the heart rate, also suppresses inflammation and improves
survival.
“Chronic inflammation is the root cause of many diseases, like
diabetes, heart disease and cancer,” said Dr. Falvey, lead author
of the paper. “Through this type of vagus nerve stimulation, we now
realize that we can target infection, reducing inflammation all
without affecting heart rate, thus lowering that fatality
risk.”
The vagus nerve is often referred to as the body’s superhighway
– it connects the brain with all major organs and controls
functions like heart rate, breathing and gastrointestinal function.
When the nerve is stimulated, it can reduce inflammation, which is
a trigger for many diseases, and help the body’s immune system.
Inflammation is an important immune response, however, if
uncontrolled, can lead to serious conditions such as sepsis,
Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic
inflammatory disorders.
This research highlights and suggests the potential for
non-pharmacological, vagus nerve stimulation to eventually treat a
variety of diseases, like sepsis – a leading killer worldwide,
accounting for more than 8 million deaths each year – and other
inflammatory disorders.
“We continue to study how vagus nerve stimulation is promising
to treat a variety of diseases, and we’re studying how vagus nerve
stimulation affects the body’s ‘flight or fight’ physiological
response,” said Dr. Pavlov. “This research is important because we
found that through stimulation of the vagus nerve in the brainstem,
we can reduce harmful inflammation with or without effects on the
heart rate.”
The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research is the global
scientific home of bioelectronic medicine, which combines molecular
medicine, neuroscience, and biomedical engineering. At the
Feinstein Institutes, medical researchers use modern technology to
develop new device-based therapies to treat disease and injury.
Building on years of research in molecular disease mechanisms
and the link between the nervous and immune systems, our
researchers discover neural targets that can be activated or
inhibited with neuromodulation devices, like vagus nerve implants,
to control the body's immune response and inflammation. If
inflammation is successfully controlled, diseases – such as
arthritis, pulmonary hypertension, Crohn's disease, inflammatory
bowel diseases, diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases – can be
treated more effectively.
Beyond inflammation, using novel brain-computer interfaces,
Feinstein Institutes' researchers developed techniques to bypass
injuries of the nervous system so that people living with paralysis
can regain sensation and use their limbs. By producing
bioelectronic medicine knowledge, disease and injury could one day
be treated with our own nerves without costly and potentially
harmful pharmaceuticals.
“Understanding how the brain-body connections control the immune
system is one of the fastest growing fields in science and
medicine,” said Kevin J. Tracey, MD, president and CEO of the
Feinstein Institutes and Karches Family Distinguished Chair in
Medical Research, who is also a co-author of the paper. “Drs.
Falvey and Pavlov’s discovery explaining how a specific part of the
brain can stop inflammation in the body has remarkable implications
for using computer chips to replace drugs in the coming years.”
Dr. Pavlov was recently elected into the American Institute for
Medical and Biological Engineering Collect of Fellows Class of 2024
for his more than 20-year dedication to medical and biological
engineering, and bioelectronic medicine.
About the Feinstein Institutes
The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research is the home of the
research institutes of Northwell Health, the largest health care
provider and private employer in New York State. Encompassing 50
research labs, 3,000 clinical research studies and 5,000
researchers and staff, the Feinstein Institutes raises the standard
of medical innovation through its five institutes of behavioral
science, bioelectronic medicine, cancer, health system science, and
molecular medicine. We make breakthroughs in genetics, oncology,
brain research, mental health, autoimmunity, and are the global
scientific leader in bioelectronic medicine – a new field of
science that has the potential to revolutionize medicine. For more
information about how we produce knowledge to cure disease, visit
http://feinstein.northwell.edu and follow us on LinkedIn.
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Julianne Mosher Allen 516-880-4824
jmosherallen@northwell.edu