Leading neuroscience company, Exsurgo, is delighted to announce that NHS researchers in the UK have published a clinical trial paper following a study of the feasibility and safety of Axon AI driven pain management system for in home use as a treatment for chronic neuropathic pain within the NHS framework.
At least one in five people around the world suffer from Chronic Pain.
Exsurgo, announced earlier this year that after six years of development and participation in three successful clinical trials it has launched Axon, a drug free, safe and efficacious system for managing Chronic Pain.
Exsurgo’s Axon system uses EEG (electroencephalography) Neurofeedback to monitor brain activity, using the data readings to help the patient ‘retrain’ how their brain responds to nerve signals from the body.
The clinical trial results are considered a breakthrough in the treatment of chronic pain.
This latest study of a small group of volunteers by NHS researchers in the UK showed that Axon is a feasible and safe home-based intervention for people with chronic neuropathic pain that is deliverable within the NHS framework and furthermore that the trial volunteers achieved significant reductions in their pain and improvements in their mental health.
Patients from the trial reported significant reductions in their levels of pain as well as in their associated mental health conditions including stress and depression.
These results echo the original breakthrough Proof of Concept trial (for which the results were published in medical journal Frontiers in Pain Research in July 2022) in the UK from mid-2020 until early 2021, during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Further results from recent clinical trials will be published in the coming months.
Latest results have shown that across all recent trials 97% of patients respond to the Axon treatment, 86% of patients will experience a reduction in Pain and that 73% will receive benefits in Mental Health and 69% will receive improvements in Sleep.
The proven science of electroencephalography (EEG) has been around for a century since German Psychiatrist Hans Gerber observed the electrical activity in a patients brain in 1924 and has been used in neurofeedback research since the early 1960s however conventional EEG Neurofeedback is complicated and costly for both the patient and clinician requiring regular attendance at a specialist clinic and equipment costing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and so it has not been used extensively, until now.
Exsurgo is changing this with the Axon system, harnessing the latest science and AI technology to make EEG Neurofeedback therapy more effective and much cheaper, in a miniaturised device that can be used in the home.
While the immediate focus for Axon is the treatment of Chronic Pain, trials to prove Axon as a treatment for other neurological conditions including Anxiety and Depression are underway.
Jiva Muthu, Exsurgo Chief Executive Officer said:
“We are delighted with the results of this clinical trial, when we embarked on the journey to create this product, we were driven by the singular vision of alleviating pain and enhancing the quality of life for millions.
Dr Mohamed Sakel MRCPMBBS, Principal Investigator, Consultant Physician in Neuro-rehabilitation Medicine from South Warwickshire University Hospital NHS Trust (SWFT) expressed optimism with this innovative, non-invasive way of relieving the misery of Neuropathic pain which is a challenge for NHS.
Dr Sakel & Exsurgo is about to launch a nationwide Randomised Control Trial which is likely to establish this as a new drug-free way to treat intractable pain.
HOW THE AXON SYSTEM WORKS
- The patient wears a custom-designed EEG headset that passively reads the electrical activity in their brain associated with pain.
- This data is transmitted wirelessly to an app on the patient’s mobile device (tablet or smartphone) and visually represented in the app via neurological exercises (in the form of simple animated games) played by the patient.
- Each session takes 30 minutes and sessions are repeated five times a week in the first 12 weeks in order to get the best results.
- Through real-time visual feedback, the patient learns to self-regulate their brain activity, and change how their brain interprets pain signals, thereby reducing their pain.
- Axon can be used by the patient in the comfort of their own home and remotely monitored by their clinician.
