Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Bonn, Germany.
Department of Surgical Sciences, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Med Hypotheses. 2020 Oct;143:110093. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110093. Epub 2020 Jul 18.
The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly spread all over the world and caused a major health care crisis. About 20% of patients develop severe disease and require hospitalisation, which is associated with a high mortality rate of up to 97% in those being ventilated and respiratory failure being the leading cause of death. Despite many therapeutic agents being under current investigation there is yet no panacea available. With increasing rates of infection throughout the world, there is an urgent need for new therapeutic approaches to counteract the infection. As the nervous system has shown to be a strong modulator of respiratory function and the immune response, we want to highlight pathways involved in regulation of respiratory function, the neuro-immune axis as well as the rationale for a potential targeted treatment of fulminant acute respiratory distress syndrome via transcutaneous non-invasive vagal nerve stimulation in critically-ill COVID-19 patients.
COVID-19 大流行已迅速在全球范围内蔓延，造成重大的医疗危机。约 20%的患者出现严重疾病并需要住院治疗，这与高达 97%的通气患者死亡率以及呼吸衰竭作为主要死亡原因相关。尽管目前正在研究许多治疗药物，但尚无万能药。随着世界各地感染率的不断上升，急需新的治疗方法来对抗感染。由于神经系统已被证明是呼吸功能和免疫反应的强大调节剂，因此我们想强调参与调节呼吸功能、神经免疫轴的途径以及通过经皮非侵入性迷走神经刺激对危重症 COVID-19 患者进行暴发性急性呼吸窘迫综合征进行潜在靶向治疗的基本原理。
