Posts tagged neuromodulation
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Clinical Trial Brings Positive Results for Tinnitus Sufferers
UT Dallas researchers have demonstrated that treating tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, using vagus nerve stimulation-tone therapy is safe and brought significant improvement to some of the participants in a small clinical trial.
Drs. Sven Vanneste and Michael Kilgard of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences used a new method pairing vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) with auditory tones to alleviate the symptoms of chronic tinnitus. Their results were published on Nov. 20 in the journal Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface.
VNS is an FDA-approved method for treating various illnesses, including depression and epilepsy. It involves sending a mild electric pulse through the vagus nerve, which relays information about the state of the body to the brain.
“The primary goal of the study was to evaluate safety of VNS-tone therapy in tinnitus patients,” Vanneste said. “VNS-tone therapy was expected to be safe because it requires less than 1 percent of the VNS approved by the FDA for the treatment of intractable epilepsy and depression. There were no significant adverse events in our study.”
According to Vanneste, more than 12 million Americans have tinnitus severe enough to seek medical attention, of which 2 million are so disabled that they cannot function normally. He said there has been no consistently effective treatment.
The study, which took place in Antwerp, Belgium, involved implanting 10 tinnitus sufferers with a stimulation electrode directly on the vagus nerve. They received 2 ½ hours of daily treatment for 20 days. The participants had lived with tinnitus for at least a year prior to participating in the study, and showed no benefit from previous audiological, drug or neuromodulation treatments. Electrical pulses were generated from an external device for this study, but future work could involve using internal generators, eliminating the need for clinical visits.
Half of the participants demonstrated large decreases in their tinnitus symptoms, with three of them showing a 44-percent reduction in the impact of tinnitus on their daily lives. Four people demonstrated clinically meaningful reductions in the perceived loudness of their tinnitus by 26 decibels.
Five participants, all of whom were on medications for other problems, did not show significant changes. However, the four participants who benefited from the therapy were not using any medications. The report attributes drug interactions as blocking the effects of the VNS-tone therapy.
“In all, four of the 10 patients showed relevant decreases on tinnitus questionnaires and audiological measures,” Vanneste said. “The observation that these improvements were stable for more than two months after the end of the one month therapy is encouraging.”
Parkinson’s patients advised to seek Deep Brain Stimulation treatment in early stages
People with Parkinson’s disease who receive Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) therapy in the early stages of the condition will benefit from a significant increase in quality of life, a revolutionary study from The New England Journal of Medicine has found.
World-leading neurologist and lead clinician Professor Peter Silburn from the Asia-Pacific Centre for Neuromodulation (APCN), a joint initiative of The University of Queensland (UQ) and St Andrew’s Hospital, said the results published today in the medical journal would transform the way we treat people with Parkinson’s disease.
“Before the release of this study, a typical patient with Parkinson’s disease would need to wait around 10 years or until their motor complications could no longer be treated successfully with medicine alone, before DBS surgery was considered an option,” Professor Silburn said.
“This study has confirmed the best medical practice for a person with Parkinson’s disease is to perform DBS surgery around 4 to 7 years into the condition, as opposed to waiting until the medications stop working.”
Researchers conduct deep brain stimulation in Alzheimer’s patient
Researchers at the University of Florida have performed deep brain stimulation on a patient with Alzheimer’s disease as part of a clinical trial studying whether the treatment can slow progression of the disease.
Called the Advance Study, the multicenter clinical trial will evaluate whether using electrodes to stimulate a part of the brain called the fornix can slow memory decline and improve cognitive function in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The trial is taking place at four sites across the United States, including UF.
“The goal of treating Alzheimer’s disease with neuromodulation is to try to enhance what patients have and slow down memory loss and the process of the disease so they can have a few more years of good function,” said Dr. Michael Okun, co-director of the UF Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration and a site principal investigator for the study. “This is a potentially exciting symptomatic therapy.”
Characterized by memory loss and a steady decline in cognitive abilities, Alzheimer’s disease affects as many as 5.1 million Americans, according to the National Institute on Aging.
Deep brain stimulation is used to treat a variety of conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and Tourette syndrome. In the procedure, researchers carefully place electrodes in specific regions of the brain. When these electrodes are turned on, they send electrical signals that prompt a therapeutic response.
“In Alzheimer’s patients there is a very slow loss of brain function,” Okun said. “These slow changes that happen in the brain lead to the clinical symptoms. The idea is that we are going to try and modulate the circuits to see if we can improve some of the symptoms.”
Alzheimer’s researchers trying brain zaps
It has the makings of a science fiction movie: zap someone’s brain with mild jolts of electricity to try to stave off the creeping memory loss of Alzheimer’s disease.
And it’s not easy. Holes are drilled into the patient’s skull so tiny wires can be implanted into just the right spot.
A dramatic shift is beginning in the frustrating struggle to find something to slow the damage of this epidemic: The first U.S. experiments with “brain pacemakers” for Alzheimer’s are getting under way. Scientists are looking beyond drugs to implants in the hunt for much-needed new treatments.
The research is in its infancy. Only a few dozen people with early-stage Alzheimer’s will be implanted in a handful of hospitals. No one knows if it might work, and if it does, how long the effects might last.
Kathy Sanford was among the first to sign up. The Ohio woman’s early-stage Alzheimer’s was gradually getting worse. She still lived independently, posting reminders to herself, but no longer could work. Medications weren’t helping.
Robot Allows ‘Remote Presence’ in Programming Brain and Spine Stimulators
With the rapidly expanding use of brain and spinal cord stimulation therapy (neuromodulation), new “remote presence” technologies may help to meet the demand for experts to perform stimulator programming, reports a study in the January issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
The preliminary study by Dr. Ivar Mendez of Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, supports the feasibility and safety of using a remote presence robot—called the “RP-7”—to increase access to specialists qualified to program the brain and spine stimulators used in neuromodulation.
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