[voisin]

> Further research revealed that the brain communicates with the spleen – an organ that plays a critical role in the immune system – by sending electrical signals down the vagus nerve. These trigger the release of a chemical called acetylcholine that tells immune cells to switch off inflammation.

Isn’t inflammation an important process for healing? Too much is obviously bad, but if we go turning it off, won’t that lead to longer term issues?

Shouldn’t we be looking to solve what’s causing the inflammation in the first place?

[mindsuck]

I'm not a doctor so I won't pretend I understand how these treatments work but:

> Tracey immediately recognised the therapeutic implications, having spent years trying to develop better treatments for inflammatory conditions such as sepsis, arthritis and Crohn’s disease. Existing drugs dampen inflammation, but carry a risk of serious side effects. Here was a technique with the potential to switch off inflammation without the need for drugs.

I don't think anyone wants to switch off inflammation for everyone, all the time or as treatment for everything, but there's treatments where it's desired.

[sidewndr46]

sepsis isn't an "inflammatory condition". It's a death sentence if it isn't dealt with promptly. Lumping that in with arthritis renders this meaningless.

[InSteady]

Sepsis occurs when inflammations goes from being localized to being spread throughout your entire body. The bacterial infection is obviously the root of the problem, but it's the inflammation that actually kills. Being able to turn off that severe systemic inflammation might buy doctors precious hours or even days to successfully treat the infection before the patient's critical organ system shut down for good.

As laypeople, should probably take a beat before saying statements made by experts and medical researchers are "meaningless."

From google:

>Sepsis is a highly inflammatory disorder with the presence of organ dysfunction in severe cases and mostly caused by bacterial infection (Bone et al., 1989).

[jeroenhd]

> Shouldn’t we be looking to solve what’s causing the inflammation in the first place?

I agree with that theory, but so far we haven't been able to figure out what really causes many auto immune diseases or how to heal them. The current treatment methods involve nasty drugs that turn off parts of your immune system entirely, but also have various other side effects.

If we can adjust the inflammation threshold, we can fix the symptoms while we're looking to solve the underlying problem. Fixing chronic inflammation will probably take a few decades at least, until then I see no reason why we wouldn't treat the symptoms better, especially if it can be done with cheap and relatively non-invasive devices.

[sterlingcooley]

Great point, but VNS is not considered to be immuno-suppresant, it's immuno-modulatory.

So Vagus Nerve signals going to spleen really allows the body to more properly regulate inflammation.

[hombre_fatal]

All sorts of medications inhibit inflammation because the body often goes apeshit and the “cure” becomes worse than the disease.

Having more control over it with simpler interventions would be a good thing.

[theobromananda]

Not an answer to your question but a comment toward the quote:

In Traditional Chinese Medicine terms, the spleen has always been described as the cause of chronic inflammatory disease. "Spleen deficiency" the core feature of ulcerative colitis and arthritis f.e.