Acupuncture and Tuina College, Chengdu University of TCM, Chengdu, SiChuan 610075, China.
J Pharm Biomed Anal. 2010 Feb 5;51(3):698-704. doi: 10.1016/j.jpba.2009.09.042. Epub 2009 Oct 2.
Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a common gastrointestinal disorder with multiple pathogenic mechanisms seen in clinical practice, and acupuncture may potentially be an alternative therapy for it. In order to investigate the biological effects of FD and the effect of acupuncture on metabolism, (1)H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabonomic techniques have been used to compare the plasma metabolic profiles of six female FD patients with those of six female healthy control subjects. Plasma metabolic profiles of FD patients treated by acupuncture at the Foot-Yangming Meridian were also collected and compared. Data obtained from NMR spectroscopy were subjected to principal components analysis (PCA). The results show that there are relatively higher levels of glucose, acetate, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and phosphatidylcholine (PtdCho), and lower levels of lactate, leucine/isoleucine, N-acetyl glycoprotein (NAc), and low-density lipoprotein/very low-density lipoprotein (LDL/VLDL) in FD patients than in healthy controls. Acupuncture treatment of FD patients significantly changed the levels of leucine/isoleucine, lactate and glucose, and slightly changed lipids level towards those of the healthy controls, demonstrating its therapeutic effects on the relief of FD symptoms. Due to the limited number of subjects, the present work is just a proof-of-principle study and further researches with larger number of subjects are needed. Our work shows the potential of an NMR-based metabonomic approach in the study of biological effects of acupuncture.
功能性消化不良（FD）是一种常见的胃肠道疾病，在临床实践中有多种发病机制，针灸可能是一种替代疗法。为了研究 FD 的生物学效应和针灸对代谢的影响，我们采用基于（1）H 核磁共振（NMR）的代谢组学技术比较了 6 例女性 FD 患者和 6 例女性健康对照者的血浆代谢谱。还收集并比较了经足阳明经针灸治疗的 FD 患者的血浆代谢谱。从 NMR 光谱获得的数据进行主成分分析（PCA）。结果表明，FD 患者的葡萄糖、乙酸盐、高密度脂蛋白（HDL）和磷脂酰胆碱（PtdCho）水平相对较高，而乳酸盐、亮氨酸/异亮氨酸、N-乙酰糖蛋白（NAc）和低密度脂蛋白/极低密度脂蛋白（LDL/VLDL）水平较低。针灸治疗 FD 患者显著改变了亮氨酸/异亮氨酸、乳酸和葡萄糖的水平，并使血脂水平略有向健康对照组方向变化，表明其对缓解 FD 症状具有治疗作用。由于研究对象数量有限，本研究仅为原理验证性研究，需要进一步扩大样本量进行研究。我们的工作表明，基于 NMR 的代谢组学方法在针灸生物学效应研究中具有潜在的应用价值。
