"Scientists at the University of California San Diego have discovered a path between the brain and the immune system that could potentially lead to new ways to ease heart attacks. They showed that disabling specific parts of that circuit could profoundly improve outcomes in mice with experimentally induced heart attacks. "The injury almost disappears," says UCSD neuroscientist Vineet Augustine, who led the new study appearing Tuesday in the journal Cell."
"Some researchers have focused on the vagus nerve, a huge bundle of fibers that carries signals between the brain and other organs to control breathing, blood pressure, digestion and other involuntary functions. A key discovery came in 2000 when researchers at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research on Long Island, New York, showed that electrically stimulating the vagus nerve in rats curbed production of an immune protein that drives inflammation."
Researchers at the University of California San Diego identified a neural-immune pathway linking the brain to immune responses that influence heart damage after myocardial infarction. Disabling targeted parts of that circuit in mice markedly reduced cardiac injury and improved outcomes. The vagus nerve transmits signals between the brain and organs and can modulate inflammatory protein production when stimulated. An implantable vagus nerve stimulator later received FDA approval for treating rheumatoid arthritis. Stress-driven fight-or-flight signaling elevates heart rate, can provoke harmful inflammation, and correlates with spikes in cardiac deaths during extreme events.
Read at www.npr.org
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