Department of Electronic Science, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Plasma and Magnetic Resonance, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.
Department of Radiology, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 21205, USA.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 28;7(1):6820. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-07306-5.
Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy that has been found useful for treating various diseases. The treatments involve the insertion of fine needles at acupoints along specific meridians (meridian specificity). This study aims to investigate the metabolic basis of meridian specificity using proton nuclear magnetic resonance (H NMR)-based metabolomics. Electro-acupuncture (EA) stimulations were performed at acupoints of either Stomach Meridian of Foot-Yangming (SMFY) or Gallbladder Meridian of Foot-Shaoyang (GMFS) in healthy male Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. H-NMR spectra datasets of serum, urine, cortex, and stomach tissue extracts from the rats were analysed by multivariate statistical analysis to investigate metabolic perturbations due to EA treatments at different meridians. EA treatment on either the SMFY or GMFS acupoints induced significant variations in 31 metabolites, e.g., amino acids, organic acids, choline esters and glucose. Moreover, a few meridian-specific metabolic changes were found for EA stimulations on the SMFY or GMFS acupoints. Our study demonstrated significant metabolic differences in response to EA stimulations on acupoints of SMFY and GMFS meridians. These results validate the hypothesis that meridian specificity in acupuncture is detectable in the metabolome and demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of a metabolomics approach in understanding the mechanism of acupuncture.
针灸是一种中医治疗方法，已被证明对治疗各种疾病有效。治疗包括在特定经络（经络特异性）的穴位插入细针。本研究旨在使用基于质子核磁共振（H NMR）的代谢组学研究经络特异性的代谢基础。在健康雄性 Sprague Dawley (SD) 大鼠的足阳明胃经（SMFY）或足少阳胆经（GMFS）穴位进行电针（EA）刺激。通过多变量统计分析分析大鼠血清、尿液、皮质和胃组织提取物的 H-NMR 光谱数据集，以研究由于不同经络的 EA 处理而导致的代谢扰动。在 SMFY 或 GMFS 穴位进行 EA 治疗会引起 31 种代谢物（例如氨基酸、有机酸、胆碱酯类和葡萄糖）的显著变化。此外，在 SMFY 或 GMFS 穴位进行 EA 刺激时，还发现了一些经络特异性的代谢变化。我们的研究表明，对 SMFY 和 GMFS 经络穴位进行 EA 刺激会产生显著的代谢差异。这些结果验证了针灸经络特异性可在代谢组中检测到的假设，并证明了代谢组学方法在理解针灸机制方面的可行性和有效性。
