ETSU researcher studying vagus nerve stimulation as potential treatment for heart failure
$2.7 million grant is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
image: Dr. Eric Beaumont of East Tennessee State University is hoping to cure heart failure through stimulation of the vagus nerve.
Credit: East Tennessee State University
East Tennessee State University’s Dr. Eric Beaumont, a professor in the Quillen College of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, recently received a grant to study a potential treatment for heart failure by stimulating the vagus nerve – a key part of the nervous system that controls involuntary functions such as heart rate and blood pressure.
The $2.7 million grant is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
The project, “Afferent Mechanisms of Vagal Neuromodulation Therapy,” will further study preliminary evidence that suggests signals from a specific part of the hypothalamus – the paraventricular nucleus – could serve as a treatment for heart failure. Thus far, large patient trials of vagal nerve stimulation to treat heart failure have failed despite preclinical evidence of success.
Beaumont, an expert in neuroscience and neurocardiology who has previously studied vagal nerve stimulation as a treatment for heart failure, is seeking to understand why.
“During heart failure, there’s an autonomic imbalance – there’s too much sympathetic output, and that, over time, will cause the heart to fail,” said Beaumont, who also serves as associate dean for Research and Graduate Education for the Biomedical Science Graduate Program. “What we’re trying to do by stimulating the vagus nerve is to slow down the heart and give it a chance to recover so it does not fail.”
Beaumont’s research will utilize a Faraday cage, an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields, to properly record the small amplitude signals from the neurons in the brain.
The line between success and failure, however, is a fine one. Stimulating the vagus too strongly or too weakly would cause the study to fail. Beaumont, however, firmly believes that treating heart failure in this way is possible.
“Success will be to cure heart failure,” Beaumont said of his research.
Long renowned for its dedication to training physicians to practice in rural and underserved communities, Beaumont is one of many researchers with the Quillen College of Medicine elevating its profile as a research institution – with researchers regularly pulling in significant grant funding to research critical health issues that affect people in this region and beyond.
To learn more about the Quillen College of Medicine, visit etsu.edu/com/.