The trial will assess the therapeutic effect of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation in patients with pneumonia associated with the Covid-19 disease
Vitality Smartcable vagus nerve stimulator. (Credit: PRNewswire / Nemechek Technologies, LLC)
Nemechek Technologies and Argentina-based Hospital Virgen del Carmen have joined in an interventional clinical trial of the Covid-19 patients.
The enrolment of Covid-19 patients has been started in an interventional clinical trial at Hospital Virgen del Carmen in Zarate.
The trial has been designed to assess the therapeutic effect of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) in patients with pneumonia associated with the disease.
Argentina hospital will use Nemechek’s Vitality Smartcable taVNS devices in the trial
Hospital Virgen del Carmen is the first health centre in South America to carry out such a study. Nemechek’s Vitality Smartcable taVNS devices have been selected to use in the study.
The Vitality Smartcable taVNS is a safe, non-invasive and easy to use device, which can be shared among multiple patients with minimum sterilisation.
According to Nemechek, the vagus nerve stimulation is demonstrated to suppress inflammatory reactions and may be useful in controlling the hyper-immune response that results in lung failure and death.
In the study, the patients will secure taVNS for five minutes four times per day. After taking consent from the patient, stimulation will be delivered to adults with moderate or severe pneumonia not requiring mechanical ventilation or critical pneumonia needing a mechanical ventilator.
Study patients will continue to secure standard of care treatment, and the patients who select not to secure taVNS therapy will continue to receive standard care treatment.
The results from patients treated with taVNS plus standard treatment will be compared with the patients with standard treatment.
Nemechek Technologies one of the founders Patrick Nemechek said: “This study at Hospital Virgen del Carmen is groundbreaking. Resource-limited healthcare systems desperately need a cost-effective treatment to limit the progress of Covid-19 in seriously ill patients.”
In May, Abbott unveiled interim results from an ongoing clinical study of its ID NOW Covid-19 rapid test in urgent care clinics.