Monday 20th, November 2023 (NewsDayHealth) -- Researchers have reported that a new 'technophile' can safely monitor an individual's vital signs from within their body.
Monitoring vital signs (VM) Pill tracks the minute vibrations in the body that are connected to heartbeat and lung breathing.
Researchers report in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Device that it has the ability to provide real-time information about patients at risk of opioid overdose because it can detect if a person stops breathing.
Lead researcher Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston stated that being able to facilitate diagnosis and monitor many conditions without having to visit a hospital can give patients easier access to healthcare and support treatment.
In background notes, researchers mentioned that ingestible devices are easier to use because they don't require surgery, unlike implants like pacemakers.
There are numerous such devices in development. In one instance, physicians have begun performing colonoscopies—which typically call for sedation in a hospital setting—using ingestible cameras the size of pills.
The concept behind using an ingestible device is that a doctor can prescribe these capsules, and the patient just has to swallow them," co-researcher Benjamin Pless, who founded the Massachusetts-based medical device developer Celero Systems, explained. "Pills are a common medication, and using ingestible devices is far less expensive than doing traditional medical procedures.
The VM Pill was tested by researchers by giving it to anesthetized pigs to swallow. After that, the pigs were given a dose of fentanyl that made them stop breathing, much like what happens to people who take too much of it.
The researchers were able to reverse the overdose after the pill detected the pigs' breathing rate and alerted them.
In human trials, the VM Pill was also ingested by patients undergoing evaluation for sleep apnea.
Breathing repeatedly stops and starts while you sleep if you have sleep apnea. Because patients must be observed sleeping in a laboratory after being connected to equipment that monitors their vital signs, diagnosing this condition is difficult.
Sleep apnea shares many symptoms with opioid-induced respiratory depression, which caught our attention given our interest in opioid safety, according to a journal news release from Pless.
At West Virginia University, ten sleep apnea patients took the VM Pill by swallowing it. According to the researchers, the device tracked the subjects' respiration rate with an overall accuracy of 93% and recognized when their breathing stopped.
Within a few days, participants safely expelled the device, which monitored heart rate with at least 96% accuracy.
As compared to the clinical gold standard studies we conducted in our sleep laboratories, "the accuracy and correlation of these recordings were excellent," stated co-researcher Ali Rezai, a neuroscientist at West Virginia University's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute.
Rezai continued, "The ability to remotely monitor critical vital signals from patients without wires, leads, or the need for medical technicians opens the door for monitoring patients outside of clinics or hospitals in their natural environments.
Although Traverso stated that changes could be made to allow the VM Pill to remain in the body for longer periods of time, the current version passes through the body in approximately a day.
The apparatus can also be modified to administer drugs; for instance, it could provide naloxone to a person overdosing on opioids.
This ingestible device could certainly be beneficial in many future situations, such as opioid overdose and other respiratory and cardiac conditions," stated Traverso.
Additional details
For more information on sleep apnea, visit the Sleep Foundation.
SOURCE: Nov. 17, 2023, news release from Cell Press
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