Much Faster Peripheral Nerve Regrowth with Electrical Stimulation

Researchers here produce faster nerve regrowth following injury via the use of electrical stimulation of tissue. This is an interesting companion piece to a recent paper that reported on the use of electrical stimulation to produce greater degrees of neurogenesis in the brain. Applying electromagnetic fields to the body with the goal of beneficially changing the behavior of cells is a poorly explored facet of medical technology, when compared to the effort put into pharmacology. In part this may be because it appears more challenging to achieve success and reliability of outcomes in research. The fine technical details of the methodology used appear to matter greatly: field character, strength, frequency, time and repetition of application, and so forth. Researchers have found a treatment that increases the speed of nerve regeneration by three to five times, which may one day lead to much better outcomes for trauma surgery patients. Peripheral nerve injury occurs in about three per cent of trauma victims. The slow nature of nerve regeneration means that often muscles atrophy before the nerve has a chance to grow and reconnect. That's where conditioning electrical stimulation (CES) comes in. The process involves electrically stimulating a nerve at the fairly low rate of 20 hertz for one hour. A week after the CES treatment, nerve surgery is done, and the nerves grow back three to five times faster than if the surgery was done without CES. In their latest work o...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs