Gastroparesis News and Research

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Gastroparesis, also called delayed gastric emptying, is a disorder in which the stomach takes too long to empty its contents. Normally, the stomach contracts to move food down into the small intestine for digestion. The vagus nerve controls the movement of food from the stomach through the digestive tract. Gastroparesis occurs when the vagus nerve is damaged and the muscles of the stomach and intestines do not work normally. Food then moves slowly or stops moving through the digestive tract.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': Another try for mental health ‘parity’

The Biden administration continued a bipartisan, decades-long effort to ensure that health insurance treats mental illnesses the same as other ailments, with a new set of regulations aimed at ensuring that services are actually available without years-long waits or excessive out-of-pocket costs.

27 Jul 2023

Magnetic stimulation therapy can help reduce the debilitating symptoms of diabetic gastroparesis

Magnetic stimulation of a group of nerves key to how our gut and brain communicate may help correct the conversation that goes awry in painful, debilitating diabetic gastroparesis, researchers say.

16 May 2023

Insights from experts on the neurobiological processes involved in appetite regulation

Researchers summarized the main findings related to the neurobiological regulation of appetite presented at the 23rd Harvard Nutrition Obesity Symposium in June 2022.

8 May 2023

Ingestible capsule uses electricity to boost production of hunger-regulating hormone

Hormones released by the stomach, such as ghrelin, play a key role in stimulating appetite. These hormones are produced by endocrine cells that are part of the enteric nervous system, which controls hunger, nausea, and feelings of fullness.

26 Apr 2023

Gut microbiomes and mental health: how do they interact?

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine reviewed recent literature on the link between gut microbiota, the brain, and neurological disorders.

19 Mar 2023

Ingestible sensor could offer an alternative to invasive procedures used to diagnose motility disorders

Engineers at MIT and Caltech have demonstrated an ingestible sensor whose location can be monitored as it moves through the digestive tract, an advance that could help doctors more easily diagnose gastrointestinal motility disorders such as constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis.

13 Feb 2023

New simulator quantifies the effect of body posture and stomach motility on drug bioavailability

A common, economic, and easy method of administering drugs is orally, by swallowing a pill or capsule.

9 Aug 2022

Faxes and snail mail: Will pandemic-era flaws unleash improved health technology?

Jamie Taylor received two letters from the Missouri Department of Social Services Family Support Division that began, "Good news," before stating that she was denied Medicaid coverage.

1 Feb 2022

Rumination syndrome often confused with other gastrointestinal conditions

Patients who regurgitate regularly but without any known cause may have a condition called rumination. Unfortunately, rumination is often confused with other gastrointestinal conditions, which means many patients may not be getting prompt treatment.

18 Mar 2021

Painless magnetic stimulation dramatically reduces episodes of fecal incontinence

Painless magnetic stimulation of nerves that regulate muscles in the anus and rectum appears to improve their function and dramatically reduce episodes of fecal incontinence, a debilitating problem affecting about 10% of the population, investigators report.

25 Aug 2020

Congressional briefing on moving away from dog studies in the development of new medicines

At a congressional briefing Tuesday, Vanda Pharmaceuticals, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and the Humane Society of the United States urged Congress to task the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with moving away from dog studies and other animal testing in the development of new medicines.

30 Oct 2019

Researchers use MRI to watch how electrical stimulation could cure gastrointestinal disorders

More than 60 million people in the U.S. suffer from disorders in the gastrointestinal tract that could be cured by electrical stimulation, but scientists don't fully understand the therapy's effects on a critical organ: the stomach.

25 Oct 2018

Key features that distinguish Brittle Type 1 Diabetes from stable T1D

Brittle Type 1 Diabetes (BT1D) is listed by the National Institutes of Health as a rare disease impacting some 4500 people in the USA. It is defined as a severe instability of blood glucose (BG) levels, whatever its cause, with frequent and unpredictable episodes of hypoglycemia (low) and or hyperglycemia (high sugars) that disrupts quality of life.

27 Oct 2017

Study shows efficacy of antipsychotic as adjunctive therapy for gastroparesis in emergency department

Haloperidol is an effective first-line agent in combination with standard analgesic and antiemetic agents for the treatment of gastroparesis in the emergency department.

26 Oct 2017

Studies show how endoscopic procedures can improve outcomes and care

Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, features a study reporting that a simpler procedure for collecting biopsy specimens during various procedures can improve patient care, and a study showing how a relatively new procedure, POEM, has been adapted to help an additional set of patients with gastroparesis, a troubling stomach problem.

3 Aug 2017

Novel portable wireless device can monitor stomach motility in patients suffering from gastroparesis

The potentially debilitating condition known as gastroparesis, which results when stomach muscle contractions function abnormally, causing the stomach's contents to empty too slowly, affects as many as five million Americans

8 May 2017

Johns Hopkins study shows that healthy adult gut loses and regenerates nerve cells

Johns Hopkins researchers today published new evidence refuting the long-held scientific belief that the gut nerve cells we're born with are the same ones we die with.

19 Apr 2017

TTUHSC El Paso investigators receive $1.8 million grant to support digestive disorder research

Co-principal investigators Richard McCallum, M.D., and Irene Sarosiek, M.D., have received a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

10 Nov 2016

Cairn launches non-invasive Gastric Emptying Breath Test for measuring rate of gastroparesis in adults

Cairn Diagnostics, formerly known as Advanced Breath Diagnostics (ABDiagnostics), has launched the 13C-Spirulina Gastric Emptying Breath Test (GEBT).

30 Mar 2016

Rhythm Metabolic awarded FDA grant to advance ongoing setmelanotide clinical trial in Prader-Willi syndrome

Rhythm announced today the award of a $1 million research grant from the FDA Office of Orphan Products Development to its subsidiary, Rhythm Metabolic, Inc., to support the ongoing Phase 2 clinical trial of setmelanotide, the company's novel peptide MC4 agonist, for the treatment of obesity and hyperphagia in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS).

24 Sep 2015