Reducción del dolor crónico aplicando Terapia e Implementación bioelectronica en la medula espinal de la columna vertebral

Abstract

Currently, many drugs provide their therapeutic action only at specific sites in the body, but they are administered in a way that causes the drug to spread throughout the body. This can lead to serious side effects. These have been significantly reduced, thanks to a bioelectronic control device. With it, the administration of chemical substances is reduced to the maximum and pain control is maximized. All that the drug goes directly to the core of the problem Chronic pain is one of the major health problems that affects the population and generates serious physical and psychological problems. In fact, we all know that when our head hurts our stress level increases.

Now imagine a person with chronic pain. This situation causes irritation and frustration, which induces a change in the quality of life. In addition, it can be the inducer of disorders such as depression, anxiety, appetite alteration or sleep disturbance, among others. All this leads to an even greater worsening of the quality of life of the person, affecting their social, family and even work life. These problems have been minimized in rats thanks to advances in bioelectronics achieved by a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers from Linköping University and the Karolinska and Acreo Swedish Institutes in Sweden, reports the journal Science Advance.

Local administration from an implanted device can avoid these problems, especially if the rate of administration can be adjusted according to the needs of the patient. We turned to ionic and electronic conductive polymers to design a device that could be implanted and used for local delivery of electrically controlled therapeutics. The conductive polymers in our device allow electronic pulses to be translated into biological signals, in the form of ionic and molecular fluxes, which provide a way to interface biology with electronics.

Devices based on conductive polymers and polyelectrolytes have been demonstrated in the controlled delivery of substances to neural tissue, biosensors, and neural recording and stimulation. While providing proof of the principle of bioelectronic integration, such demonstrations have been performed in vitro or in anesthetized animals. Here, we demonstrate the efficacy of an implanted organic electronic delivery device for the treatment of neuropathic pain in an animal model.

The devices were implanted in the spinal cord of rats and, 2 days after implantation, local administration of the inhibitory neurotransmitter g-aminobutyric acid (GABA) was started. Highly localized administration resulted in a significant decrease in pain response with low doses and no observable side effects. This demonstration of bioelectronics-based organic therapy in awake animals illustrates a viable alternative to existing pain treatments, paving the way for future implanted bioelectronic therapies.