Molecular Mechanism of Acupuncture

Baylor College Of Medicine, Houston TX

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Meridian medicine, such as acupuncture, acupressure, and Qigong, have been commonly used to treat a variety of diseases and disorders; however, the potency of these alternative methods has not been widely accepted by mainstream due to a lack of scientific evidence. Although substantial evidences have been accumulated that acupuncture has prominent analgesic effect; there is no systemic research regarding signaling pathways mediated by acupuncture in treating diseases. Recently, we have found that acupuncture treatment lead to significant anti-inflammatory as well as vasodilatory modulation in animal models. We hypothesize that acupuncture analgesia might function partially by its direct and/or indirect inhibition of inflammation, since pain is frequently associated with inflammation and acupuncture has been successfully used to treat a number of human inflammatory diseases. We have also found that cholinergic pathway may play an important role in acupuncture-mediated anti-inflammatory effects and other therapeutic benefits in the animal model as demonstrated by microarray using a rat oligo set containing 6,000 probes. The purposes of this proposal are 1), to further determine cellular and molecular mechanisms by which acupuncture attenuates inflammation in vivo in rats; and 2), to identify the signaling pathways by which acupuncture mediates anti-inflammatory and vasodilatory effects in the animal model. This study represents an unexplored area of research and would provide important insight into how acupuncture technology can be linked to modern concept of gene regulation in biological systems and may further offer a feasible strategy to increase understanding the molecular biology of alternative medicine in meridian therapies. We believe that our studies may open new era towards molecular understanding of acupuncture treatment in pain, inflammation, as well as a variety of vascular diseases in humans.