Question: What is vagus nerve stimulation?
Mark S. George: Well, the vagus nerve, we actually have two of them. They run in our necks, right here on either side and they connect the base of our brain to our body. The vagus nerve goes from the base of the brain to our heart, to our lungs, to our stomach and so vagus nerve stimulation stands for really any way of stimulating that nerve and transmitting information back up into the brain. Routinely it's done in humans through a device called a vagus nerve stimulator.
The vagus nerve stimulation involves implanting device about this size, right here underneath the skin and then connecting a wire up to the nerve. So, that involves one surgical operation after we put to sleep and involves putting hardware in your body and it costs a little bit of money. So in the first studies, for VNS for depression, we choose only people who had failed lots and lots of other medications and commonly electroconvulsive therapy as well. So, we restricted the first use of it to people with what's called treatment resistant depression, a harder to treat depression. And so its FDA approved for only treatment resistant depression.
The problem with the device as it is now is that the battery last about five years. So that in the five years, you need to replace it out. But most people with this level of depression, really bad depression struggle with it for many years. Lots of medicines that don't work. Once they get better, and if this device is what's helping them, there is no real side affects and so they tend to just keep it in for as long as they want to go better.
Vagus nerve stimulation was first discovered as a device or a procedure that would stop someone from having a seizure. So, people discovered that by stimulating this nerve, you could, if somebody was having a seizure will stop them. And so was first developed to treat people who have seizure disorders or what's called epilepsy. in about 1998 the company that makes VNS came to be here at MUSE and we said, we thought it would work for the treatment of depression and so right now its FDA, the Food and Drug Administration approved for the treatment of epilepsy or depression.
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