High blood pressure is normally treated with drugs, but they often don’t work very well and in many cases patients stop responding to them. Renal denervation has been a promising technique, but recent news of Medtronic’s SYMPLICITY system failing to achieve a primary efficacy endpoint in a clinical trial put a lot of doubt about the technology. Now researchers at University of Freiburg in Germany have developed a new electronic device that has shown an impressive ability to reduce hypertension in rats.
The device takes advantage of the fact that electric signals that regulate blood pressure changes are relayed through the vagus nerve to the brain. By interfering with that signal, they were able to reduce the blood pressure. They were not the first to attempt to stimulate the vagus nerve to try to regulate hypertension, but managed to achieve success because the new implant was made to help localize and stimulate the nerve to achieve an optimal response. After implantation, the device determines which of its 24 electrodes are closest to the target nerve fibers and begins electrical stimulation to overwrite the natural signal. Because of its ability to accurate energize the right nerve fibers, the implant avoids triggering other nerve fibers that play a role in other mechanisms.
Testing the system on rats, the researchers were able to achieve a 30 percent reduction in blood pressure without any notable side effects. Don’t get too excited though, because the research team believes their technology has as many as ten years of development and testing to go before it’s available for human patients.
Study in Journal of Neural Engineering: Blood pressure control with selective vagal nerve stimulation and minimal side effects…
Press release: Implantable Cuff with Electrodes…
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