Safety aspects of transcranial direct current stimulation concerning healthy subjects and patients.

By C. Poreisz, K. Boros, Andrea Antal, Walter Paulus. Brain Research Bulletin, 2007

1,089 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cortical excitability changes induced by tDCS and revealed by TMS, are increasingly being used as an index of neuronal plasticity in the human cortex. The aim of this paper is to summarize the partially adverse effects of 567 tDCS sessions over motor and non-motor cortical areas (occipital, temporal, parietal) from the last 2 years, on work performed in our laboratories. One-hundred and two of our subjects who participated in our tDCS studies completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained rating scales regarding the presence and severity of headache, difficulties in concentrating, acute mood changes, visual perceptual changes and any discomforting sensation like pain, tingling, itching or burning under the electrodes, during and after tDCS. Participants were healthy subjects (75.5%), migraine patients (8.8%), post-stroke patients (5.9%) and tinnitus patients (9.8%). During tDCS a mild tingling sensation was the most common reported adverse effect (70.6%), moderate fatigue was felt by 35.3% of the subjects, whereas a light itching sensation under the stimulation electrodes occurred in 30.4% of cases. After tDCS headache (11.8%), nausea (2.9%) and insomnia (0.98%) were reported, but fairly infrequently. In addition, the incidence of the itching sensation (p=0.02) and the intensity of tingling sensation (p=0.02) were significantly higher during tDCS in the group of the healthy subjects, in comparison to patients; whereas the occurrence of headache was significantly higher in the patient group (p=0.03) after the stimulation. Our results suggest that tDCS applied to motor and non-motor areas according to the present tDCS safety guidelines, is associated with relatively minor adverse effects in healthy humans and patients with varying neurological disorders.

Subfields: Neurology, Pathology and Forensic Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1a3d17ac1b81d0b85d75d219851499ca88e6a2b

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Citations in the corpus

A systematic review on reporting and assessment of adverse effects associated with transcranial direct current stimulation. (2011, background): “In fact, some animal (Agnew &McCreery, 1987; Akimova & Novikova, 1978 ; Liebetanz et al. 2009) and clinical (Iyer et al. 2005 ; Nitsche et al. 2004; Poreisz et al. 2007 ; Tadini et al. 2010) studies addressed this issue; however, the former is not appropriate to test subjective effects whereas most…”
Transcranial direct current stimulation: State of the art 2008 (2008, methodology): “Moreover, these protocols were tested in more than 2000-3000 subjects in laboratories worldwide with no serious side effects, except for a slight itching under the electrode, and seldom-occurring headache, fatigue, and nausea.(34) It is also possible that longer-lasting protocols are safe, because s”
Low intensity transcranial electric stimulation: Safety, ethical, legal regulatory and application guidelines (2017, background): “Specifically querying for known AEs: The use of standardized questionnaires that query about the occurrence of specific AEs and offer numeric scales for rating the intensity (e.g., (Fertonani et al., 2015, Poreisz et al., 2007)).”
Clinical Research with Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS): Challenges and Future Directions (2011, neutral): “For instance, in a large retrospective study, Poreisz et al.(94) reviewed adverse effects in 77 healthy subjects and 25 patients who underwent a total of 567 1 mA stimulation sessions.”
Safety of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Evidence Based Update 2016 (2016, result): “These conclusions are in agreement with a prior analyses and review focused on single center experiences [64].”
A technical guide to tDCS, and related non-invasive brain stimulation tools (2015, background): “Most often reported effects are tingling and itching sensations under the electrodes, headache, and tiredness (Poreisz et al., 2007; Fertonani et al., 2015).”
Evidence-based guidelines on the therapeutic use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). (2017, background): “Adverse effects are limited to mild headache or local sensory discomfort (Poreisz et al., 2007; Brunoni et al., 2011; McFadden et al., 2011; Kessler et al., 2012).”