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Jun 25, 2008 5:50 pm US/Central
Anti-Obesity Device Being Tested At 'U'
ST. PAUL (WCCO) ―
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EnteroMedics, Inc. has created an implant device that looks very much like a pacemaker. It takes advantage of the way our brain communicates with our stomach and the rest of the digestive system through the vagus nerve.
CBS
The Centers for Disease Control estimates obesity costs our country roughly $100 billion a year. Some say the costs in suffering are much higher.
Two-thirds of American adults are overweight. Pills, diets and preaching about exercise have failed society, as our average body mass index, or BMI, grows with our expanding waistlines.
"If you take the BMI criteria for obesity, which is a BMI of 30, that's over 62 million Americans," said Physiologist Mark Knudson, PhD.
Knudson is also the president of a Minnesota company that has developed a device that could become the next big breakthrough in fighting obesity.
In its St. Paul lab, EnteroMedics, Inc. has created an implant device that looks very much like a pacemaker. It takes advantage of the way our brain communicates with our stomach and the rest of the digestive system through the vagus nerve.
The device is implanted in the abdomen with wire leads connected to the vagus nerve just above the stomach. Small electrical impulses, spaced five minutes apart during waking hours, have already been proven to reduce hunger signals to the brain.
When the stomach gets food it is supposed to tell our brain we are full and we can stop eating. But, according to the University of Minnesota's Dr. Sayeed Ikramuddin, "In the obese people that is broken. That cycle is clearly broken in those patients. "
Ikramuddin is a bariatric surgeon who performs gastric bypass to reroute the digestive system and help people lose weight. He has found that surgery to be life-changing, even life saving, for some patients.
However, Ikramuddin is excited to be the lead researcher on a national clinical trial to see how effective EnteroMedics' minimally invasive device can be.
Three-hundred volunteers will take part in a double-blind clinical trial. Double-blind means neither the researchers nor the test subjects will know which implants have been activated. Two-thirds of the devices will be functional through the first year and then all devices will be switched on.
Results of a study just released in the past week show that patients in Australia and Europe lost 29 percent of their excess weight in the first year. Ikramuddin imagines what that could mean for reducing the disease risks of obesity, such as heart attack, stroke, arthritis and diabetes.
"Eighty percent of people that have type-2 diabetes are overweight," he said. "And it's estimated that in the next two decades there will 150 million people with type-2 diabetes."
Previous research has already shown one-third of patients cease to be diabetic if they lose excess weight. EnteroMedics' Knudson said if their device wins FDA approval next year as expected, it could be ready for a hungry group of patients and on the market by mid 2010.
The University of Minnesota is recruiting 30 volunteers to try the device in the EmPower clinical trial. For more information on participating in the trail, click here. 
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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