Using Deep Brain Stimulation to Fight Disease Inside the Brain

Experts expect that the 90,000 patients currently treated for Parkinson’s per year will rise 25% annually. Treating this 95,000 people involves the standard Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which means electrically stimulating the central or peripheral nervous system, but the cost of this procedures is hefty and the side-effects can be alarming.

Switzerland researchers have developed ultra-flexible electrodes that could relieve this cost and side-effects as well as treat a myriad of other health problems.

“Professor Philippe Renaud of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland reported on soft arrays of miniature electrodes developed in his Microsystems Laboratory that open new possibilities for more accurate and local DBS. At the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, in a symposium called ‘Engineering the Nervous System: Solutions to Restore Sight, Hearing, and Mobility,’ he announced the start of clinical trials and early, yet promising results in patients, and describes new developments in ultra-flexible electronics that can conform to the contours of the brainstem - in the brain itself - for treating other disorders.”

(de Lausanne, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale. “Deep Brain Stimulation Fights Disease Deep Inside The Brain.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 20 Feb. 2013. Web.
16 Mar. 2013. )