Vagus nerve stimulation as a potential treatment for acute asthmatic bronchoconstriction: a systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a therapeutic option for diseases such as epilepsy and depression. Given that the smooth muscle of the bronchi is innervated by the vagus nerve, VNS could aid in treating pathologies of the respiratory system involving a bronchoconstrictive component. The aim of this review is to evaluate the literature on the potential for VNS to relieve airway bronchoconstriction in asthma. Methods: A systematic review of several databases (PubMed, Embase and Scopus) was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. Studies of individuals (humans and animals) with asthma symptoms were included if they reported respiratory function outcomes. Two authors independently reviewed all papers for selection, methodological assessment, and data extraction. Results: A total of 2072 articles were identified, of which 1,528 unique articles were screened for inclusion. 30 relevant articles underwent full-text review, and six articles (four in humans; two in animals) were included. One human article was subsequently added manually due to a new finding in an updated search. Due to incomplete data reporting, meta-analysis was not possible. In both animal studies, low-voltage VNS improved respiratory function following a histamine or acetylcholine challenge. In human studies (one case report, two prospective interventional cohort studies, one randomized controlled study), VNS, in addition to standard-of-care anti-asthmatic therapy, appears to temporarily improve respiratory function. Conclusion: Limited low-quality evidence suggests low-voltage VNS appears to reduce bronchoconstriction in both animal and human subjects. Given concerns about translatability, the absence of a control group in most studies, and the concomitant use of anti-asthmatic pharmacotherapy, it is not possible to draw conclusions about the true magnitude of VNS's effect on respiratory function and acute asthma progression. Well-designed randomized controlled trials (RCT) are needed to further evaluate the effectiveness of VNS in treating acute asthmatic bronchoconstriction and to better understand its underlying therapeutic mechanisms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".