VNS therapy: novel treatment for metabolic and cardiac diseases

VNS therapy: novel treatment for metabolic and cardiac diseases

Hypertension (HTN) impacts over 1 billion people worldwide, and clinical management is challenging. When left uncontrolled, high blood pressure can significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular events. The majority of hypertensive patients are treated with anti-hypertensive drugs to control blood pressure (BP), but many limitations exist including resistant HTN, inability to tolerate therapy, and non-compliance with the medication regime. For these patients, an alternative approach is needed to control BP. Recently, the imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, evident in HTN, has been the target of novel device-based therapies such as VNS. The main goal of our research was to evaluate the efficacy of VNS to treat HTN and HTN-induced heart disease. We investigated the impact of VNS on disease progression, survival, and cardiovascular remodeling in Dahl salt-sensitive HTN rats.

  • E.M. Annoni,  E.G. Tolkacheva, Stochastic and periodic vagus nerve stimulation: how do they affect the heart? Bioelectronics in Medicine, 10.2217/bem-2019-0005, 2019
  • E.M. Annoni, D.Van Helden, Y. Guo, B. Levac, I. Libbus, B.H. KenKnight, J.W. Osborn, E.G. Tolkacheva. “Chronic low-level vagus nerve stimulation improves long-term survival in salt-sensitive hypertensive rats”, Frontiers of Physiology, 10:25. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2019.000252019
  • S.W. Lee, K.Kulkarni, E.M. Annoni, I. Libbus, B.H. KenKnight, E.G. Tolkacheva, “Stochastic vagus nerve stimulation affects acute heart rate dynamics in rats, PLOS ONE, 13(3), e0194910 (2018)
  • Steven W. Lee, Qinglu Li, Imad Libbus Xueyi Xie, Bruce KenKnight, M. Garry, Elena G. Tolkacheva. “Chronic cyclic vagus nerve stimulation has beneficial electrophysiological effects on healthy hearts in the absence of autonomic imbalance”, Physiol Rep, 2016 May;4(9).