[CCoE Notice] Cullen College Dissertation Announcement

[Hutchinson, Inez A]

[Dissertation Defense Announcement at the Cullen College of Engineering]

Regulation of High Blood Pressure using Somatic Neuromodulation

USING MINIATURIZED WIRELESS NEURAL ELECTRODE

Kevin Isae Romero

June 27th 2024; 11:00 AM - 12:30 AM (CST)

Committee Chair:
Metin Akay, Ph.D.

Committee Members:

Scott Smith, Ph.D, | Yasemin Akay, Ph.D  | Yungchen Du, Ph.D  | Tianfu Wu, Ph.D

Abstract

Hypertension is a main cause of death in the US with more than 103 million adults affected. While pharmacological treatments are effective, approximately 20-30% of hypertensive subjects do not respond to these pharmalogical treatments also known as drug-resistant hypertension (DRH). Drug resistant hypertension is known to be a risk factor for cardiovascular events, including stroke, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and cardiovascular mortality, as well as adverse renal events, including chronic kidney disease and end-stage kidney disease. This thesis aims to look at an alternative treatment for drug resistant hypertension through the use of neuromodulation of the common peroneal nerve to elicit a depressor response in Spontaneously Hypertensive rats (SHR). Firstly, an acute study was performed on both SHR rats and normotensive rats (WKY) to optimize the stimulation parameters for neuromodulation treatment. The optimized parameters, 1 mA amplitude, 1 ms cathodic monophasic pulse, at 2 Hz were deemed to produce the best depressor response without causing damage to the peroneal nerve. After finding the optimal parameters for stimulation we performed a sub-chronic experiment in which animals implanted with a novel wireless miniature electrode( w-µCE) and blood pressure (BP) telemetry systems underwent daily peroneal nerve stimulation at threshold for 8 minutes for five weeks. This reduced systolic blood pressure ( SBP)  in WKY animals by -7 mmHg, and in SHR animals by -20 mmHg during treatment  (p<0.01). Ambulatory SBP measured daily recorded approximately twenty-four hours after the cPNS treatment, showed a significant reduction from the first (176.6 ± 24.1 mm Hg; n=5) to the last week of treatment (165.7± 42.7 mm Hg; n=4), a -9 mm Hg reduction (p<0.01). Evaluation of heart rate during the treatment showed no significant difference caused by the daily 8-minute cPNS. Electrical stimulation of the common peroneal nerve induced a reduction in SBP that is comparable to that reportedly achieved pharmacologically by ACE inhibitor Ramipril, or by renal denervation procedures. Lastly histological analysis of the heart and aorta in which we analyzed heart wall thickness, aorta thickness, and fibrosis in the heart showed no significant differences in the treatment group versus normotensive rats, highlighting that a longer treatment period might be needed to see significant changes in these anatomical structures. These results support the notion that neuromodulation of the common peroneal nerve can serve as an alternative treatment for drug resistant hypertension.

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