In rhythm with the body
An award-winning new device detects differences in electrical activity in healthy and abnormally functioning guts.
We’ve all heard of electrocardiograms to check electrical activity in the heart, but now New Zealand scientists are developing a similar device to diagnose problems in the gut.
Researcher Peng Du, a senior research fellow at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland, was in March awarded the $200,000 Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize for his work on the device, which can detect differences in electrical activity in healthy and abnormally functioning guts. The muscular contractions, which move food through the gut, are triggered by waves of electrical activity, although the signals are much more subtle and difficult to measure than those in the heart.
He says three types of gut disease are definitely associated with electrical abnormalities: stomach paralysis (which can be the end stage of very severe indigestion), chronic nausea and vomiting, and in certain cases, gastric cancer. “Indigestion, nausea and vomiting are symptoms, but they don’t tell us what is causing the disease. Understanding the electrical rhythm and relating it to the disease help the clinician with the mechanism for why it is happening.” In the US, the Auckland device was used in studies on patients who were having an implanted gastric pacemaker to normalise the electrical activity in their gut.
Because irritable bowel syndrome is a catch-all descriptor of a number of gut conditions, Peng says it’s possible a subgroup of people with the condition could also have electrical dysrhythmias in their small intestine.
The first device was tested in people having gut surgery at Auckland City Hospital, and Auckland will now lead international multi-centre trials, expected to begin this year, to validate results from the device.
Three types of gut disease are definitely associated with electrical abnormalities: stomach paralysis, chronic nausea and vomiting, and gastric cancers.