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Australia has among the highest incidence of Crohn’s disease in the world, with around 100,000 people currently living with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis¹.

The disease is often diagnosed in people between the ages of 20 and 30, at a time when they are trying to study, enter the workforce or commence families.

There is no cure currently available for Crohn’s disease, but a new clinical study hopes to improve the lives of people impacted by the disease — many of whom are at the mercy of life-long drug therapies to manage symptoms.

Around 80% of all people with Crohn’s disease eventually need surgery to remove inflamed sections of their bowel if drug treatments stop being effective. However, the disease recurs in the majority of cases.

Now, a new medical device fromhas been implanted in a Melbourne father during surgery at the to kickstart the body’s natural anti-inflammatory mechanisms to treat Crohn’s disease.

The device, the size of a thumbnail, attaches to the vagus nerve in the abdomen. The vagus nerve controls many functions in the body, such as digestion, heart rate and the immune system. The device is made up of tiny electrodes that stimulate the vagus nerve to trigger the body’s natural defences and prevent inflammation from damaging the gut.

Image courtesy of The Bionics Institute.

The research, a collaboration between the Bionics Institute, , and The Austin, aims to show that the device can prevent the recurrence of Crohn’s disease at the surgical site, with the hope of allowing patients to continue their lives without the fear of further surgery and debilitating symptoms.

While other devices currently in clinical trials for inflammatory bowel disease are inserted at the neck level and can cause serious side effects, our device is inserted in the abdominal cavity, meaning that — critically — the heart and lungs are not affected when the device is switched on, according to the researchers.

^{1 https://crohnsandcolitis.org.au/about-crohns-colitis/crohns-disease/}

Top image credit: iStock.com/peakSTOCK