Studies reveal the molecular mechanisms of acupuncture and moxibustion improve neural degenerative diseases

Time: 2016-02-19

Source: China's traditional Chinese medicine

Author: Huang Xin

Report from our correspondent The Shanghai institute of applied physics, biology, physics, Chinese academy of science with school of institute of Shanghai university of traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture meridians, acupuncture and massage and acupuncture and other units cooperation of longhua hospital, in Parkinson's disease mouse model, from the point of view of autophagy to explore the molecular mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion improve neural degenerative diseases, and as the old Chinese medicine acupuncture therapy in neurodegenerative diseases and aging, etc provide beneficial train of thought of application of related research papers in the recently published in the journal science reports.

Study found that acupuncture mice leg gb 34 point can not mTOR depend on the way to adjust the dopaminergic neurons in the brain of the autophagy pathway, restore the damaged level of autophagy, remove alpha-synuclein accumulate in the brain, and significantly improve their exercise capacity. Autophagy in eukaryotes is the important process of material flow in the cell, and is highly conserved in evolution. Many studies have shown that autophagy pathway disorders and diseases including neurodegenerative disease development.

In recent years, some of the work also proved that the exercise and mechanical stimulation by regulating cell and organism level of autophagy to play a role. Inspired, Shanghai should content the researcher say chunhai fan, Hu Jun and associate professor Sun Yangong huan-gan wu, professor of Shanghai university of TCM with PeiJian etc the team cooperation, explore the mechanical stimulation of acupuncture as a special, whether through regulating the body's level of autophagy to play a role on the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Tian Tian and other researchers examined in Parkinson's disease model mice brain autophagy related indexes before and after acupuncture. Studies have shown that acupuncture gb 34 point can significantly increase the little mouse dopaminergic neurons in the lysosome membrane protein expression, and fix up of autophagy - lysosomal pathway. Rise in level of autophagy suppresses the Parkinson's iconic pathological protein alpha-synuclein accumulate within the little mouse. As the level of autophagy, injury of dopaminergic neurons in mice improve, a vigor of the dopaminergic neurons and exercise behavior ability received a significant boost. Further research indicates that the level of autophagy induced by acupuncture raise does not depend on mTOR pathways. This characteristic different from the commonly used autophagy inducers, as a kind of physical therapy and acupuncture, in order to avoid the side effects of chemical drugs and avoid the blood brain barrier problems in chemical drug delivery has provided a new possibility.