Electroencephalographic correlates of low-frequency vagus nerve stimulation therapy for Crohn’s disease

Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease traditionally requiring treatments with important side effects, such as anti-TNF (tumor necrosis factor) therapy, which is efficient only for 30 to 40% patients who, moreover, can become non-responders later (up to 50% of them) (Olesen et al., 2016). This therapy can further generate adverse effects like infections and up to half of the CD patients will not continue therapy (non-compliance). Therefore, because vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is thought to activate the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, an anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) pathway partly through the action of acetylcholine on immune cells releasing TNF (Bonaz et al., 2013), VNS is being evaluated in CD patients as an alternative (or a complement) to pharmaceutical treatments (Bonaz et al., 2016;2017a).

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