เครื่องมือ MRI เฝ้าดูว่าการกระตุ้นด้วยไฟฟ้าสามารถรักษาความผิดปกติของการย่อยอาหารได้อย่างไร

มากกว่า 60 ล้านคน ในสหรัฐอเมริกา. มีอาการผิดปกติในระบบทางเดินอาหารที่สามารถรักษาให้หายได้ด้วยการกระตุ้นด้วยไฟฟ้า, but scientists don’t fully understand the therapy’s effects on a critical organ: ท้อง. Purdue University researchers used an MRI to show a play-by-play of how sending electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve successfully corrects stomach complications. The technique paves the way for more precise treatment that drugs and dietary changes have not achieved.

A new MRI technique helps scientists to understand how the stomach responds to vagus nerve stimulation, which could offer more precise treatment for digestive disorders. (Purdue University video/Kun-Han Lu) ดาวน์โหลดภาพ

“ในท้ายที่สุด, by asking a patient to undergo multiple MRI scans with different electrical stimulation settings, we could figure out the best stimulation setting for alleviating that particular patient’s symptoms,” said Kun-Han “Tom” Lu, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering.

The work, which is published as the cover of the journal Neurogastroenterology and Motility in its October 2018 ปัญหา, aligns with Purdue’s กระโดดยักษ์ การเฉลิมฉลอง, acknowledging the university’s global advancements made in health, longevity and quality of life as part of Purdue’s 150th anniversary. นี่เป็นหนึ่งในสี่ธีมของการเฉลิมฉลองประจำปีของ เทศกาลไอเดีย, ออกแบบมาเพื่อแสดง Purdue เป็นศูนย์กลางทางปัญญาในการแก้ปัญหาในโลกแห่งความเป็นจริง.

Digestive disorders create a medical burden of billions of dollars every year.

One important indicator of a digestive disorder is the rate at which the stomach empties of food, เรียกว่า “gastric emptying,” into the small intestine for the absorption of nutrients. Slow gastric emptying in the disorder gastroparesis, ตัวอย่างเช่น, means that stomach muscles aren’t moving properly.

Stimulating the vagus nerve would allow doctors to control how fast the stomach empties, effectively curing gastroparesis.

“Some stimulation protocols for the stomach in humans already have FDA approval, but they’ve proved only partially effective,” กล่าวว่า Terry Powley, Purdue’s Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and the director of the SPARC (Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions) โครงการ, an initiative of the National Institutes of Health to map out the stomach’s neural circuitry.

Purdue University researchers Kun-Han Lu (ซ้าย) and Zhongming Liu (ขวา) are providing real-time assessment of stomach function to inform better therapies. ดาวน์โหลดภาพ

As part of the SPARC project, Purdue researchers proposed using MRIs in small animals to get a better view of the effects of vagus nerve stimulation on the stomach.

“MRIs are non-invasive, show tissue contrast well and make it easier to repeat an experiment for verification,” Lu said. A YouTube video is available at https://youtu.be/ewsx0g2suSE.

Lu stimulated the vagus nerve to control the pyloric sphincter in rats, the valve that controls food leaving the stomach and entering the small intestine. He then created 3D reconstructions of MRI images over time. The images showed that stimulation relaxed the pyloric sphincter, speeding up gastric emptying to potentially correct delayed emptying in the case of gastroparesis, or other kinds of gastrointestinal malfunction.

“This method provides the physiological information for understanding the impacts of any treatment so that it can be fine-tuned for a specific organ or a specific disorder,” กล่าวว่า Zhongming Liu, ผู้ช่วยศาสตราจารย์ของ biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering.

The researchers plan to push the technology to retrieve even more information about gastric physiology and conduct their own tests of different treatments on gastric disorders.

แหล่งที่มา: www.purdue.edu, by Kayla Wiles