CHINA – Vagus nerve is the longest nerve, widely distributed in the gastrointestinal and cardio vascular tissue.  Vagus nerve stimulation is an effective method of physical therapy for the treatment of certain refractory disease. It has been on the rise for nearly 10 years in the international community even the United States Food and Drug Administration identified it as effective in the treatment of epilepsy and depression technologies.

This approach requires the need for surgical implantation of micro stimulator to stimulate nerves in the neck and neck fans thus it has potential side effects and other factors limit its application.

Chinese scientists began looking into a way to produce the possibility of “vagal effect” through the body surface stimulation.

Lead researcher Professor Zhu Bing, China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine team, looked at the mammalian ear and ear canal central distribution auricular branch of the vagus nerve. They observed in a series of studies to stimulate this area of epilepsy and depression disease has better results and developed an independent ear fans IP vagus nerve stimulator.

At the national science and technology support program and Beijing Natural Science Foundation of China, supported by the research team at the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Guang Men Hospital, Acupuncture Hospital and Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital Affiliated Gokokuji multi-center clinical trials conducted control study.

Clinical study found that the ear vagus nerve stimulation in patients with depression compared with the control stimulation, the use of international common symptoms of depression assessment scale – Hamilton rating scale, the reduction rate is large, clinical symptoms improved more significantly.

“The results show that the ear vagus nerve stimulation is a safe, effective, green and convenient method of treating mild to moderate depression.” Rongpei Jing Chinese Academy researcher said.

The scientists recently published a paper in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Currently, scientists are developing new wireless network ear wearable vagus nerve stimulator.