What is a treatment tool that stimulates nerves from outside the body and draws attention to treat epilepsy and depression?

One of the treatments for diseases related to cranial nervesVagal nerve stimulation therapyThere is something called. In English, vagus nerve stimulation treatment called VNS embeds an electrical stimulation generator in the chest, extends the lead from there, wraps around the vagus nerve in the neck, stimulates it and activates it. In order to embed the device, surgery is necessary for treatment, but in the United StatesElectroCore MedicalA type of device that does not embed the startup "GammaCoreWe have developed a great attention from the industry.

GammaCore
http://gammacore.com/

The Vagus Nerve: A Back Door for Brain Hacking - IEEE Spectrum
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/the-vagus-nerve-a-back-door-for-brain-hacking/

Vagal nerve stimulation therapy was approved in the United States in 1997 and is mainly refractory to suddenly lose consciousnessEpilepsyIt is also approved in Japan as a treatment for depression and depression. He said that he can suppress seizures of epilepsy by continuing treatment for several years rather than just a single treatment. In addition to epilepsy, improvement of attention, concentration, memory function, language function is recognized in some cases, and symptoms such as alteration and laryngitis may appear as side effects.

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Surgical operation is necessary for vagus nerve stimulation treatment which embeds the device in the chest subcutaneously and sends electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve at regular intervals, which costs about 100,000 yen. It seems that the burden on the body is said to be less, but it is not something that you can do with a sense like hitting the injection.

In addition, the device is battery driven, its life span is about 6 years. If the battery runs out, you need surgery to replace it. Furthermore, it is not the first therapy to be chosen for epilepsy or depression treatment because there is a disadvantage arising by embedding the device in the body for several years, such as it is necessary to turn off the device at the time of MRI shooting.

ElectroCore Medical, the startup, developed the world's first noninvasive vagal nerve stimulator called "gammaCore" that does not require surgery. This device gave electric stimulation to the vagus nerve of the cervix by pressing it against the neck, and at the beginning of development it attracted attention in the symposium held in 2013 as a new treatment method of cluster headache and migraine.


Since gammaCore is about iPhone 6 size it can be carried. It is much easier to use compared to surgery by pressing the neck twice a day for 2 to 3 minutes. The point that the doctor himself who gives gammaCore to the patient himself, how much electric stimulation is given at once, for example, can also be set. Besides being able to self-treat patients, there is an advantage that it can be used in conjunction with drug therapy.

The price of gammaCore is about 200 dollars (about 25,000 yen) to about 400 dollars (about 50 thousand yen), which can greatly lower the treatment cost compared to the vagus nerve stimulation treatment which operates the surgery.


It is a gamma core with great expectations, but while it has cleared European regulatory standards as a treatment for migraine and other headaches, there are still many clinical trials need to be done in the United States. If clinical trial results show that gammaCore has an accurate effect on chronic diseases, it may be adopted as a new treatment for many diseases such as refractory epilepsy, migraine and cluster headache.