Freie Universitaet Berlin, Cluster of Excellence Languages of Emotion and Dahlem Institute for Neuroscience of Emotion, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. www.languages-of-emotion.de
Expert Rev Neurother. 2010 Jan;10(1):87-92. doi: 10.1586/ern.09.138.
Major depressive disorder is a disease with prominent individual, medical and economic impacts. A relevant proportion of depressive patients suffering from a therapy-resistant course are increasingly being treated with antidepressant brain stimulation techniques. One of these interventions is the vagus nerve stimulation that has recently been tested in a number of clinical trials. To date, the acute and long-term efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation are still under debate. Thus further studies are required, especially since the exact mode of action of vagus nerve stimulation is still not well understood. In this paper we will review the results of existing clinical trials as well as the neurobiological effects measured with neuroimaging, biochemical and electrophysiology approaches.
重度抑郁症是一种具有显著个体、医学和经济影响的疾病。越来越多患有抗治疗性病程的抑郁患者正在接受抗抑郁脑刺激技术治疗。这些干预措施之一是迷走神经刺激，最近已在多项临床试验中进行了测试。迄今为止，迷走神经刺激的急性和长期疗效仍存在争议。因此，需要进一步研究，特别是因为迷走神经刺激的确切作用机制仍不清楚。在本文中，我们将回顾现有临床试验的结果以及使用神经影像学、生物化学和电生理学方法测量的神经生物学效应。
