Electrical stimulation of the brain reduces blood pressure

Deep brain stimulation was first used to treat hypertension

Medical news from the University of Bristol: Brain stimulation raises hopes for patients with drug-resistant high blood pressure

At the University of Bristol, scientists for the first time used deep brain stimulation to treat high blood pressure in a patient who was not helped by any medications. The woman was prescribed eight names of drugs that had serious side effects. And despite this, her blood pressure was kept at 320/150. Thanks to the new method, it was significantly reduced.

Amely Hoffmann suffered from very high blood pressure for 10 years. Her attending doctors prescribed her both medications and devices to reduce pressure, but it did not help. The woman was exhausted, she had constant migraines, and doctors could not find the cause of her hypertension, although they repeatedly conducted various examinations and tests. Due to the medications she had to take, she lost her hearing several times, which eventually led to almost complete deafness. The woman did not hear at all with her right ear, but very badly with her left. Amelie Hoffmann herself said that she was very worried about her future and the future of her children.

In 2011, a neurosurgeon from the University of Bristol named Nick Patel published a report about a patient in whom he treated neuropathic pain with deep brain stimulation, and at the same time the patient's blood pressure dropped. This message was accidentally seen by Amelie Hoffman and contacted the doctor. When she first came to the University of Bristol to consult a cardiologist, her blood pressure was about 320 over 150 with a norm of 90-120/60-80. Pressure 180/90 is already considered a serious case of hypertension, which, in turn, is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Cardiologist Angus Nightingale said that he measured the patient's blood pressure several times because he could not believe his eyes. He added that it was unknown how she managed to survive with such high blood pressure, and that he and his colleagues were afraid that she could have a stroke at any moment. In 2012, Amelie Hoffmann already became a participant in a study during which, for the first time in medical practice, deep brain stimulation was used for therapy with high blood pressure.

The process of deep brain stimulation looks like this: an electrode is inserted into the patient's brain, which is connected to a device resembling a pacemaker. This device stimulates certain regions of the brain. Such treatment is used, for example, in Parkinson's disease or in cases where the patient suffers from irreversible pain. There are also cases when brain stimulation helped with anorexia – in a group of 16 patients aged 21 to 57, the average body mass index rose from 13.8 to 17.3. And scientists from the Scripps Research Institute (The Scripps Research Institute) they were able to stop the development of heroin addiction in rats – they stimulated the subthalamic nucleus.

In Mrs. Hoffman's case, the electrode affected the near-conductive gray matter of the brain. Immediately after the procedure, the patient's blood pressure dropped by 100-150 units, and she was able to refuse seven of the eight medications that she had been prescribed earlier. Two and a half years later, the effect still persisted, the patient's blood pressure was still high – 180-220/130, but these figures were not as large as before, and her quality of life improved significantly.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  01.03.2017