Why It’s Time to Take Electrified Medicine Seriously

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Why It’s Time to Take Electrified Medicine Seriously

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These advances allow scientists to identify specific nerves and implant devices that can be activated when needed to stimulate or dial down their activity; that in turn controls cells in organs targeted by those nerves that regulate the body’s many immune and metabolic responses.
While some bioelectronic, or electroceutical, therapies already exist to treat conditions such as headaches, certain cases of depression, as well as chronic and sinus pain, the new wave of electricity-based strategies could expand to help people with some of the most widespread chronic diseases in the world, including high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, some forms of blindness and even dementia.
Companies like Abbott already have neuromodulation devices designed to stimulate nerves, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, for treating chronic pain.
Electroceuticals “are the next wave of new treatments we will have to treat disease,” says Kris Famm, president of Galvani Bioelectronics, a biotech collaboration between Glaxo-Smith-Kline and Google’s Verily that is focused on developing electricity-based therapies.
In recent decades, with better understanding of how electrical signals work in the body, more effective bioelectronic devices focused on refined modulation of electrical signals—including pacemakers for the heart, cochlear implants, as well as devices to control urinary incontinence and strategies for helping paralyzed muscles to move—have made it to market.
At Massachusetts General Hospital, researchers are working on ways to activate nerves in the eye to restore vision in people with retinal disease, while scientists at Johns Hopkins are convinced that manipulating electrical signals in the brain in just the right way could address conditions from depression to dementia.
Each time the patient activates the device, it produces a preset current of energy that blocks the pain signals sent by the nerve to the brain

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