2023-04-26 20:00:00
Hormones released by the stomach such as ghrelin They play a key role in stimulating appetite. These hormones are produced by endocrine cells that are part of the enteric nervous system, which control hunger, nausea, and the feeling of satiety.
Now a team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -MIT- have shown that it is possible to stimulate these endocrine cells to produce ghrelin using an ingestible capsule that provides an electrical current to the cells; a approach that is based on electroceuticalthat is, the emerging field of medicine that uses electricity to treat disease.
Electroceutics is based on the idea that cells and tissues in the human body have unique electrical properties, and that these properties can be used to treat a variety of conditions. For example, the technique has already been used to stimulate the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the abdomen, in treatments for epilepsy and depression. Also to stimulate the heart muscles in patients with heart failure or to treat Parkinson’s disease by electrical stimulation of the brain.
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What the team has now discovered John Traverso, gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and lead author of the study titled Bioinspired, ingestible electroceutical capsules for hunger-regulating hormone modulation is published in the magazine Scienceis that this same technique could be useful for treating illnesses involving nausea or loss of appetite as the caquexiathat is, the loss of body mass that can occur in patients with cancer or other chronic diseases.
Thus, in animal tests, the researchers demonstrated that this new capsule can significantly increase the production of ghrelin in the stomach. “We have shown how through electrical stimulation we can interact with the stomach lining and release hormones, and we anticipate that this could be used at other points in the gastrointestinal tract.”
Electricity for good digestion
The enteric nervous system controls all aspects of digestion, including the movement of food through the gastrointestinal tract. So, for example, toSome study subjects (animals) with gastroparesiaa disorder of the stomach nerves that results in very slow movement of food through the digestive system, have shown symptomatic improvement after electrical stimulation generated by a pacemaker-like device that can be surgically implanted in the stomach.
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In their early tests with the device, doctors had theorized that the electrical stimulation would cause the stomach to contract, helping to push food out. However, what they later discovered is that beyond affecting motility, electrical stimulation of the stomach in the animals studied increased the production of the hormone ghrelin. They also found that this electrical stimulation did not lead to any significant inflammation or other adverse effects. Once they established that electrical stimulation was causing the release of ghrelin, the researchers set out to see if they could achieve the same effects using a device that could be swallowed and temporarily reside in the stomach.
The researchers tested their capsule in the stomachs of large mammals and found that it produced a substantial increase in ghrelin levels in their bloodstreams. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of the use of electrical stimuli through an ingestible device to increase endogenous levels of hormones in the body. Its great advantage is that to obtain the desired result we use the body’s own systems instead of introducing external agents”, declares the co-author of the study, Khalil Ramadi.
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The researchers found that for this stimulation to work, the vagus nerve, which controls digestion, must be intact, since it is through this that the electrical pulses would be transmitted to the brain, which would later stimulate the endocrine cells of the stomach to produce ghrelin. .
Now, Traverso’s lab plans to explore the use of electroceutics in other parts of the GI tract. The researchers hope to test the device in human patients within the next three years. If developed for use in human patients, this type of treatment could potentially replace or complement some of the existing drugs used to prevent nausea and stimulate appetite in people with cachexia or anorexia.“It’s a relatively simple device, so we think it’s something that can help people on a relatively short time scale,” Traverso concludes.
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