War and childbirth can be deadly. Uncontrolled bleeding is the leading cause of preventable deaths in trauma situations and in the military. Postpartum hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal deaths worldwide.
Enter the “neural tourniquet.” Scientists at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research are using a device from Five Liters, a subsidiary of Spark Biomedical, in a novel clinical trial to study if vagus and trigeminal nerve stimulation can regulate blood biomarkers that promote blood clotting thereby slowing or stopping uncontrolled bleeding.
Dr. Jared Huston, director of Trauma Research for the Department of Surgery at Northwell Health and associate professor in the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, says the neural tourniquet can address a long-standing issue:
“This could be used beforehand to try and decrease the risk of bleeding during surgery and after surgery. Not to mention in childbirth there are risks, and with bleeding disorders, inherited bleeding disorders, hemophilia.”
The non-invasive on-the-ear technology, or transcutaneous auricular neurostimulation (tAN), uses a small device to stimulate the vagus and trigeminal nerves. The trial, sponsored by Five Liters, is a healthy human subject study looking at whether vagus nerve stimulation alone is enough to change the way platelets behave.
Dr. Huston’s prior preclinical research shows vagus nerve stimulation can decrease traumatic blood loss by up to 75 percent.
