The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a medical device that offers new hope to patients incapacitated by rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic condition that afflicts 1.5 million Americans and is often resistant to treatment.

The condition is usually managed with medications. The device represents a radical departure from standard care, tapping the power of the brain and nervous system to tamp down the uncontrolled inflammation that leads to the debilitating autoimmune disease.

The SetPoint System is an inch-long device that is surgically implanted into the neck, where it sits in a pod wrapped around the vagus nerve, the largest nerve in the body. The device electrically stimulates the nerve, a sort of information freeway through the body, for one minute each day.

The stimulation can turn off crippling inflammation and “reset” the immune system, research has shown. Most drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis suppress the immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to serious infections.

On a recent episode of the American College of Rheumatology podcast, the SetPoint implant was described as representing a “true paradigm shift” in treatment of the disease, which until now has relied almost entirely on an evolving set of pharmaceutical interventions, from gold salts to powerful agents called biologics.

The F.DA. designated the implant as a breakthrough last year in order to expedite its development and approval. It represents an early test of the promise of so-called bioelectronic medicine to modulate inflammation, which plays a key role in diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.