BabyStrong Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS) Paired Bottle Feeding to Improve Oral Feeding
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04849507. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
BabyStrong taVNS-Paired Bottle Feeding to Improve Oral Feeding
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Feeding is critical for pre-term infants and term infants with hypoxic ischemic brain injury, in order to be discharged home with their families and avoid a gastrostomy tube (G-tube) placement. The proposed study will employ a novel system that stimulates the vagus nerve through the skin in front part of the ear, the BabyStrong feeding system, to delivered transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) paired with oral feedings daily for 10 days. In an earlier study at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), this type of vagus nerve stimulation resulted in more than half of infants who were slated to receive G-tubes, taking full oral feeds by mouth and avoiding a G-tube. In this study some babies will receive the therapy for 10 days and others will get no stimulation. If no progress is made in feeding volumes by day 10, the infants will be switched to the other treatment for 7 days. Parents, study personnel, and care providers will be blinded to taVNS assignment. The electronic stimulation device is Federal Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared for investigational use, and the BabyStrong has been designated a Breakthrough Medical Device by the FDA. This study will be conducted in MUSC's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT04849507
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 17 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Interventions
- transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation Device
- Sham transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation Device
Device
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 2 Weeks to 5 Months
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jul 31, 2022
- Primary completion
- May 23, 2024
- Completion
- Jul 31, 2024
- Last update posted
- Oct 27, 2025
2022 – 2024
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medical University of South Carolina | Charleston | South Carolina | 29425 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04849507, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Oct 27, 2025 · Synced Sep 6, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT04849507 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.