Cui Shaoyang, Xu Mingzhu, Huang Jianting, Wang Qing Mei, Lai Xinsheng, Nie Binbin, Shan Baoci, Luo Xun, Wong John, Tang Chunzhi
Department of Rehabilitation, Shenzhen Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, China.
Stroke Biological Recovery Laboratory, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
Behav Neurol. 2018 Apr 30;2018:8740284. doi: 10.1155/2018/8740284. eCollection 2018.
Acupuncture has been widely used in China to treat neurological diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, its mechanism remains unclear. In the present study, eighty healthy Wistar rats were divided into a normal control group ( = 15) and premodel group ( = 65). Forty-five rats that met the criteria for the AD model were then randomly divided into the model group (MG), the nonacupoint group (NG), and the acupoint group (AG). All rats received positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, and the images were analyzed with Statistical Parametric Mapping 8.0. MG exhibited hypometabolism in the olfactory bulb, insular cortex, orbital cortex, prelimbic cortex, striatum, parietal association cortex, visual cortex, cingulate gyrus, and retrosplenial cortex. AG exhibited prominent and extensive hypermetabolism in the thalamus, hypothalamus, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, cerebral peduncle, midbrain tegmentum, and pontine tegmentum compared to NG. These results demonstrated that acupuncturing at GV24 and bilateral GB13 acupoints may improve the learning and memory abilities of the AD rats, probably via altering cerebral glucose metabolism (CGM) in the hypothalamus, thalamus, and brain stem. The observed effects of acupuncture may be caused by regulating the distribution of certain kinds of neurotransmitters and enhancing synaptic plasticity.
在中国，针灸已被广泛用于治疗包括阿尔茨海默病（AD）在内的神经系统疾病。然而，其机制仍不清楚。在本研究中，80只健康的Wistar大鼠被分为正常对照组（n = 15）和造模组（n = 65）。然后，将符合AD模型标准的45只大鼠随机分为模型组（MG）、非穴位组（NG）和穴位组（AG）。所有大鼠均接受正电子发射断层扫描（PET），并使用统计参数映射8.0对图像进行分析。MG在嗅球、岛叶皮质、眶额皮质、前边缘皮质、纹状体、顶叶联合皮质、视觉皮质、扣带回和压后皮质表现出代谢减低。与NG相比，AG在丘脑、下丘脑、终纹床核、大脑脚、中脑被盖和脑桥被盖表现出明显且广泛的代谢增高。这些结果表明，针刺GV24和双侧GB13穴位可能通过改变下丘脑、丘脑和脑干的脑葡萄糖代谢（CGM）来提高AD大鼠的学习和记忆能力。观察到的针刺效果可能是通过调节某些神经递质的分布和增强突触可塑性而引起的。
