Editorial: Vagus nerve-mediated drive in supporting homeostasis: optimizing global health through monitoring and stimulating vagal function

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  • Rangon C.M.
    • Other Affiliation: INWE’CARE Medical Center
  • Niezgoda A.
    • Other Affiliation: University of Medical Sciences of Poznań
  • Moyse E.
    • Other Affiliation: INRAE Centre Val-de-Loire
  • Porges S.W.
    • Affiliation: School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry
Abstract
  • Epigenetics encompasses the changes in gene expression triggered by environmental cues that occur without altering the underlying DNA sequences. Although epigenetics involves a limited number of identified mechanisms so far (DNA methylation, histone modifications and noncoding RNAs), the field of Epigenetics is spreading rapidly over integrated physiopathology (Jeffries, 2020). The importance of epigenetics has been acknowledged in cancer (Sun et al., 2022), sepsis (Binnie et al., 2020), autoimmune/inflammatory diseases (Surace and Hedrich, 2019), addiction (Hamilton and Nestler, 2019), aging (Pal and Tyler, 2016; Pérez et al., 2022), neurodegenerative diseases (Berson et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2022) and even in neurodevelopmental (Esposito et al., 2018; Wu et al., 2020) and psychiatric diseases (Abdolmaleky et al., 2023). Likewise, a broad and expanding set of therapies in clinics have been potentialized by tuning the vagal complex of brainstem, i.e., the key neural node of homeostasis, via non-invasive Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) (Hilz, 2022). Moreover, Heart Rate Variability (HRV), a physiologically validated and easily accessible read-out of the vagal tone (Lewis et al., 2012), is acknowledged as a polyvalent prognostic tool (Gidron et al., 2018; Mol et al., 2021). This is not surprising, since Epigenome is considered as a “mediator for host-microbiome crosstalk” (Peery et al., 2021) and since vagus nerve represents the fastest pathway of the Microbiota-Gut-brain Axis (Fülling et al., 2019). However, except for regulating neuro-inflammation (Chen et al., 2022), the mechanisms through which VNS influences peripheral and central nervous system plasticity are not well described yet, limiting therapeutic optimization (Morrison et al., 2020; Keute and Gharabaghi, 2021). Therefore, as the vagal complex (i.e., peripheral and brainstem components) is definitely prone to bring about epigenetic modulations, notably through neuro-endocrine stimuli (Gil et al., 2013), we questioned the epigenetic role of vagus nerve, in order to promote noninvasive VNS, guided by HRV monitoring, as a universal therapy to stay healthy.
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  • Article
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  • Attribution 4.0 International
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  • Frontiers in Physiology
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  • 14
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  • English
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  • 1664-042X
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  • Frontiers Media SA

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