A first clinical experiment is being directed at Shangai’s Ruijin Hospital, together with testings for opioid addiction. The treatment, which involves a deep brain stimulation has been prescribed for movement issues such as Parkinson’s for a long time now. Efforts of the Western clinics to continue with human experiments of brain implants regarding drug addiction have been aborted. Currently, China has appeared as a focal place for this type of research.
The long-time and ample anguish created by the U.S. opioid epidemic may be shifting the risk-reward measurements for doctors. The experimental surgery designed in China is coming to America as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved clinical testing in West Virginia of DBS for opioid dependence.
There are only eight registered DBS scientific experiments for drug dependence, and six of them are in China.
This surgery concerns implanting a device that operates as a type of pacemaker for the brain, electrically simulating intended regions. This apparatus allows interventions that are, hypothetically, volatile rather than permanently killing brain cells.
Chinese Plan To Tackle Opioid Addiction With Brain Implants
Lots of critics are not comfortable with the experiment, and some say it should not proceed with it. But in the meantime, the deaths caused by opiate addiction are on the rise. More than 500,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the decagon ending in the year 2017. That is a sign of a critical need to search for more efficient treatments.
China’s clinical trials have given mixed results. There was published a one case study talking about a patient who was addicted to heroin and overdosed after getting the apparatus. But another study published in January by doctors at a military clinic in Xi’an demonstrated that five of eight heroin-addicted monitored for two years stopped using drugs after DBS surgery.
The Chinese deep brain simulation apparatus producer SceneRay Corporation is searching for Chinese regulatory greenlight of its DBS device for drug addiction and is establishing a clinical experiment with 60 participants. The Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. approved a clinical trial for opioid dependence in February.
