Progress in Nature Medicine weight loss treatment: Deep brain stimulation can treat bulimia

A preliminary study showed that implanted brain stimulators significantly reduced binge eating episodes and helped patients lose weight

According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, a small device that showed promise in a clinical trial of two patients with runaway bulimia (BED) could detect brain activity associated with food cravings in an important area of the brain and respond

A paper published in the journal Nature Medicine describes the trial, which followed two patients for 6 months after implanting a device commonly used to treat drug-resistant epilepsy and monitored activity

The nucleus accumbens has been associated with pleasure and reward processing, and has been associated

"This is an early feasibility study, and we primarily assess safety, but the strong clinical benefits that these patients have reported to us are really impressive and exciting," said casey Halpern, MD, senior author of the study, associate professor of neurosurgery and director of

BED is considered the most common eating disorder in the United States and affects at least millions of people

Cravings for specific foods precede bouts of

The devices the researchers used to capture and stimulate signals from the brains of mice have been commercialized and licensed to treat drug-resistant epilepsy

The new study is a preliminary test

In the next phase of the study, whenever a low-frequency signal associated with craving appears, the brain stimulation device automatically sends high-frequency electrical stimulation to the nucleus accumbens

"This is a beautiful demonstration of how translation science works in the best of circumstances," said Dr.

The scientists continued to follow these subjects for six months and began recruiting new patients

References: Pilot study of responsive nucleus accumbens deep brain stimulation for loss-of-control eating