Effect of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on impaired glucose tolerance: a pilot randomized study

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Jianxun Dong¹  Xia Li²  Rosa B Spaeth³  Jian Kong³  Stephanie Camhi⁴  Hongcai Wang⁵  Shaoyuan Li⁵  Hong Meng⁵  Xu Zhai⁵  Peijing Rong⁵  Bing Zhu⁵  Feng Huang⁶  Xing Liao⁷ 

[1] Beijing Hospital of T.C.M Affiliated to Capital University of Medicine Sciences, 100010, Beijing, China;Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, 100029, Beijing, China;Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA;Department of Psychology, Endicott College, Beverly, MA, USA;Institute of Acu-Mox, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, 16# Nanxiao Street, 100700, Dongzhimennei, Beijing, China;Institute of Acu-Mox, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, 16# Nanxiao Street, 100700, Dongzhimennei, Beijing, China;Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, 100029, Beijing, China;Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, 100700, Beijing, China;

关键词: Systolic Blood Pressure;    Fast Plasma Glucose;    Impaired Glucose Tolerance;    Vagus Nerve;    Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-14-203

 received in 2013-10-03, accepted in 2014-05-22,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundImpaired glucose tolerance (IGT) is a pre-diabetic state of hyperglycemia that is associated with insulin resistance, increased risk of type II diabetes, and cardiovascular pathology. Recently, investigators hypothesized that decreased vagus nerve activity may be the underlying mechanism of metabolic syndrome including obesity, elevated glucose levels, and high blood pressure.MethodsIn this pilot randomized clinical trial, we compared the efficacy of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) and sham taVNS on patients with IGT. 72 participants with IGT were single-blinded and were randomly allocated by computer-generated envelope to either taVNS or sham taVNS treatment groups. In addition, 30 IGT adults were recruited as a control population and not assigned treatment so as to monitor the natural fluctuation of glucose tolerance in IGT patients. All treatments were self-administered by the patients at home after training at the hospital. Patients were instructed to fill in a patient diary booklet each day to describe any side effects after each treatment. The treatment period was 12 weeks in duration. Baseline comparison between treatment and control group showed no difference in weight, BMI, or measures of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose (FPG), 2-hour plasma glucose (2hPG), or glycosylated hemoglobin (HbAlc).Results100 participants completed the study and were included in data analysis. Two female patients (one in the taVNS group, one in the sham taVNS group) dropped out of the study due to stimulation-evoked dizziness. The symptoms were relieved after stopping treatment. Compared with sham taVNS, taVNS significantly reduced the two-hour glucose tolerance (F(2) = 5.79, p = 0.004). In addition, we found that taVNS significantly decreased (F(1) = 4.21, p = 0.044) systolic blood pressure over time compared with sham taVNS. Compared with the no-treatment control group, patients receiving taVNS significantly differed in measures of FPG (F(2) = 10.62, p < 0.001), 2hPG F(2) = 25.18, p < 0.001) and HbAlc (F(1) = 12.79, p = 0.001) over the course of the 12 week treatment period.ConclusionsOur study suggests that taVNS is a promising, simple, and cost-effective treatment for IGT/ pre-diabetes with only slight risk of mild side-effects.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Huang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.