Randomized Study of Non-Invasive Autonomic Neuromodulation for Long COVID Published Online in Neuromodulation
Key Highlights
- ➤541 participants randomized; 250 met final analytic criteria
- ➤Depressive symptoms fell approximately 33% with electroCore tcVNS
- ➤Combined tcVNS and SAT cut PTSD symptoms approximately 39%
- ➤Open-label study lacked sham control; findings remain hypothesis-generating
- ➤Neither technology is FDA-approved for treating Long COVID
Expert Statements
Peter S. Staats, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of electroCore; lead author
“Long COVID represents an enormous unmet medical need”
Peter S. Staats, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of electroCore; lead author
“Millions of people continue to experience symptoms that can affect multiple aspects of their health and their ability to work and function, yet we still have no FDA-approved therapy specifically for Long COVID as a condition.”
Peter S. Staats, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of electroCore; lead author
“That makes the search for new therapeutic approaches particularly important.”
Peter S. Staats, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of electroCore; lead author
“What makes these findings especially interesting is that we evaluated two distinct, non-pharmacologic approaches to autonomic neuromodulation—direct cervical non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation and a novel acoustic intervention—and observed improvements across multiple symptom domains.”
Peter S. Staats, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of electroCore; lead author
“Long COVID is unlikely to have a single cause or a single solution, but these results suggest that autonomic regulation may represent a potential therapeutic target worthy of further investigation in larger, sham-controlled studies.”
ROCKAWAY, N.J., Nov. 12, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- electroCore, Inc. (Nasdaq: ECOR) (“electroCore” or the “Company”), a bioelectronic technology company, today announced that results from a randomized, open label-controlled study evaluating non-invasive autonomic neuromodulation in adults with Long COVID have been published online in Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface.
The study, “Non-invasive Autonomic Regulatory Interventions for Long COVID: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” evaluated two non-invasive approaches designed to influence autonomic regulation: transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation (tcVNS) using proprietary electroCore technology and Sonocea Sonic Augmentation Technology™, a proprietary acoustic neuromodulation technology. The study evaluated each intervention independently as well as the combination of the two approaches.
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