ADRA2B genetic polymorphism modulates vagus nerve stimulation response

ADRA2B Delta301-303 deletion status predicts the direction and strength of taVNS effects on oddball task pupillary responses in 41 adults (t(37)=3.03, p=.004, d=0.84).

• Why it matters: Individual differences in responsiveness to vagus nerve stimulation in aging are a barrier to using it for Alzheimer’s-related noradrenergic mechanisms, motivating genotype-level predictors.
• What they did: In a sham-controlled single-blind crossover trial, 41 adults completed a visual oddball task during transcutaneous auricular VNS, with pupillary measures; a subset also had fMRI and PET-based NET mapping.
• The result: Deletion carriers more often showed pupillary increases while non-carriers decreased, and carriers exhibited stronger pupil-BOLD coupling alignment with cortical NET expression (t(22)=2.82, p=.010, adjusted d=1.21), linked to taVNS effects (rho=0.45, p=.023).

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