Fighting atrial fibrillation by acting on the signals that reach the heart from the nervous system

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in Western countries. In Spain it is estimated that there are more than one million patients with AF. Although AF is not fatal by itself initially, it facilitates blood clots and significantly increases the risk of stroke. The therapies used to treat this arrhythmia are usually initially pharmacological and, if the results are not as desired and the patient meets certain conditions, an intervention is carried out by ablation. However, the percentage of patients in whom AF is definitively reversed after this type of therapy is not as satisfactory as might be expected.

This project proposes the development of methods that could in the future help in the definition of new treatments for AF. The proposed methods go through the control of communications through the Autonomous Nervous System that innervates the heart. Specifically, it is proposed to determine theoretically possible ways of regulating the nerve signaling that reaches the atria to convert an irregular rhythm into another stable rhythm away from arrhythmic behavior.