inflammation It can heal or harm. A core component of the immune system and essential for recovery from injury and infection, too much can cause diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, cancer, and other serious illnesses.
“We need to fine-tune inflammation,” says Kiuf Ma, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He and a team of HMS neuroscientists, along with collaborators in Houston and China, recently demonstrated one such method: acupuncture.
During animal studies, researchers discovered that acupuncture activates different neural pathways that suppress or promote inflammation, depending on where, when, and how it is used. Their research revealed that acupuncture stimulation could reduce systemic inflammation in mice experiencing a cytokine storm, an extreme immune response in which the body rapidly releases excess inflammatory proteins. (Such dangerous, sometimes deadly inflammation is a hallmark of sepsis and has also been seen with COVID-19. For more information on the role inflammation plays in a myriad of diseases, see Raw and Red Hot 2019 (See May-June issue, page 46.) Ma’s team also found that acupuncture can: Getting worse If administered at the wrong time, it can cause inflammation, suggesting that the ancient remedy can be harmful if not practiced properly.These findings, published in the journal neuron In August, there are hopes for improvements in the safety and effectiveness of acupuncture, which could ultimately help treat patients with inflammatory diseases.
Acupuncture uses thin needles to stimulate points on the body’s surface, which scientists believe send neural and biochemical signals to corresponding organs and systems. Traditional Chinese medicine describes this process as an enhancement of energy flow (air) Improves health through invisible meridians. This therapy is used around the world to alleviate pain, depression, nausea, digestive problems, and other ailments, and has become part of Western medicine. But it’s still unclear exactly how it affects the nervous system, Marr said.
Building on research conducted elsewhere in recent decades, Marr’s lab is conducting its first foray into acupuncture research to determine which neural pathways are activated by acupuncture and the process by which this process occurs. We wanted to find out how this helps reduce systemic inflammation. A team at Harvard University applied electroacupuncture, which involves passing a weak electric current between two needles, to mice suffering from widespread inflammation caused by a bacterial infection. They focused on the effects of this stimulation on two types of nerve cells: chromaffin cells and noradrenergic neurons, which secrete the hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine, which are thought to play a role in the body’s inflammatory response. I did. Using genetic tools to “knock out” these neurons, they identified chromaffin cells and noradrenergic neurons as important regulators of inflammation.
Researchers found that three factors can produce markedly different results in modulating inflammation: timing of treatment, location of acupuncture needles, and intensity of stimulation.
In one experiment, high-intensity electroacupuncture was applied to the abdomen and hindlimbs of rodents at various stages of infection. This stimulation excited noradrenergic nerve fibers in the spleen (an important immune system organ), which helped reduce or increase inflammation, depending on when the stimulation was given.Mice are treated prophylactically – correct in front Cytokine storm mice had less inflammation and survived much better than untreated mice. Their survival rate improved from 20 percent to almost 80 percent. “However, if the cytokine storm is already at its peak, high-intensity acupuncture worsens inflammation,” warns Marr. This finding could have important clinical implications, he noted, since patients often seek acupuncture. rear They already have health problems.
Location is also important. The researchers applied low-intensity electroacupuncture to a single point on the animals’ hind legs, triggering another nerve pathway called the vagal adrenal axis, which has been shown to reduce systemic inflammation. This approach caused the adrenal gland’s chromaffin cells to secrete dopamine. After just 15 minutes of stimulation, these mice had reduced cytokine levels, which translated into better survival (60 percent) than untreated mice (20 percent). “This is really surprising,” Marr declares of the results. This type of acupuncture “reduced all types of cytokines simultaneously.”
Interestingly, the vagus-adrenal pathway can only be excited through the legs and not the abdomen. Ma said this shows that the body has an organized neural network, and when different areas are stimulated by acupuncture, it can cause distinct biological changes. .
Another insight: in mice suffering from cytokine storm, low-intensity stimulation was more reliable at quelling inflammation than high-intensity stimulation, which can suppress or exacerbate inflammation (as previously discussed). As of). “This suggests that low-intensity therapy to the hindlimb region is a safer way to treat an ongoing cytokine storm,” Marr says. [than high intensity], and that the strength of the stimulus is important. ”
For Ma, these collective discoveries show that the 3,000-year-old practice of acupuncture, far from a folk medicine, has a scientific basis that may eventually be understood. He hopes to explore this mystery further through basic research in animals and, in collaboration with clinical partners, to study how acupuncture can help “fine-tune” inflammation in humans.
