The nanodevice to treat overactive bladder or incontinence

| Overactive bladder is a fairly common pathology suffered by both men and women and that, without being serious, has a significant impact on quality of life.

An overactive bladder is manifested by a desire to urgent urination in any context, which is often associated with incontinence, as this urge to urinate cannot be controlled. Those who suffer from it have a high voiding frequency, urinating eight or more times a day and having to get up two or more times during the night, the urge to urinate is sudden and uncontrollable and as a consequence they have involuntary leaks or.

The treatment is pharmacological and is not always effective, although they are opening new lines of research. One of them is the installation of a microscopic device in the bladder called a nanodevice.

How does the nanodevice work?

The nanodevice consists of the device placement microscopic in the bladder that regulates bladder contractions by light so that they do not occur unintentionally. For this, a novel concept is used that is optogenetics, a science that is based on the use of genetics and light to achieve a goal. Since there are proteins that react to light (such as those of plants or some algae that photosynthesize) the objective is to try to introduce these proteins into the "target" tissues that we are interested in controlling.

These are the steps:

It is engineered with genetic engineering harmless virus that are capable of "infecting" only the neurons of the bladder nerves responsible for bladder contraction that causes urinary urgency, that is, introducing those genes light sensitive proteins.

The bladder is implanted nanodevice, a tiny device that works like a switch that manipulates the on or off of an LED light at will. The nanodevice detects the right conditions for urination and achieves to stimulate the neurons of the nerves of the bladder causing them to contract or not. In this way, normal bladder function is restored, alleviating the urgent need that patients present.

Although at the moment it is only a line of research by a team of scientists from the University of Washington, Illinois and Chicago, it is already being tested successfully in laboratory animals.

Why does an overactive bladder occur?

The overactive bladder It is because the physiological mechanisms that control urination, which are complex, are put in place unwittingly: Urination in normal conditions and in a simplified way combines two simultaneous processes. On the one hand, the tissues that allow us to retain urine they relax, and on the other the walls of the bladder they contract to exert a pressure that facilitates the evacuation of urine. This occurs voluntarily when the individual commands the brain that it is the right place and time to urinate. Specialist in gynecology and obstetrics