Fighting hypertension through applying electrical impulses on vagus nerve

The research origins from the role that immune system plays in the genesis and development of high blood pressure, with the spleen as a main character: it is there that specific immune cells, T lymphocytes, are activated and then released into the blood, migrating to the organs typically affected by hypertension ("target organs"). On one hand, they contribute to the etiology of the hypertensive condition, on the other they cause the well-known related damages. The T lymphocytes activation process, as already stated by previous observations conducted by the same Department, is the result of an interaction between parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, at the level of celiac vagus nerve and splenic nerve.

"First of all - says engineer Lorenzo Carnevale, first author of the paper - with this research we observed that Angiotensin II (AngII, an hormone involved in the control of blood pressure, ed) is capable of increasing nerve impulses which, through the celiac branch of the vagus nerve in k, stimulate T lymphocytes activation in the spleen. But we were able to obtain the same effect also by applying electrical impulses, of specific frequency and amplitude, to the same nerve".