Electric needles may help relieve inflammation throughout the body

and U.S. neuroscientist found that weak electrical stimulation of nerves may help treat the system's inflammatory response. Professor Tyufu Ma, of Harvard Medical School and author of the paper published August 12 in the journal Neuron
of Cell Press, has been working on the neural mechanisms behind pain for years.
Western medicine to treat pain mostly hope to block neural pathras to suppress pain. But we have countless neural paths, each of which can be activated by a very large number of factors. So over the years, despite all the breakthroughs and achievements we've had in animal experiments, there's been no new treatment for pain. Professor Ma said.
inspired by the concept of "cure and cure" behind Chinese medicine, Professor Ma and his team focused on inflammation, an important cause of pain.
has shown that stimulating some nerves in the neck with electric currents can effectively relieve inflammation. However, this treatment often needs to be achieved through invasive surgical methods, increasing the risk of treatment. So Professor Ma and his team designed a way to send electric currents and stimulate nerves using only electric needles.
researchers used an experimental model of inflammation in mice to simulate a highly lethal form of systemic inflammation: sepsis, that can easily occur after a serious bacterial or viral infection by injecting animals with lipid polysaccharides.
first selected the "sky center" point in the mouse's abdomen for electro-needle stimulation. This needle point is closely related to the neural loop of the spleen, which is one of the main organs of immunity and inflammatory response. After 15 minutes of 3 milliamps of electric needle, the mice were injected with lipid polysaccharin. The researchers found that mice stimulated by electric needles had significantly lower inflammatory factors in their bodies and at least twice as much survival rate as those who were not treated.
however, if mice were treated with an electric needle after exposure to lipid polysaccharin, the inflammatory factors in their bodies were much higher than in untreated mice, and they all died within three days.
compared with
mice that altered the nervous system, the researchers found that stimulating the "idyllycemia" of the abdominal position activates the sensory nerves that connect the spinal cord to the spleen, producing epinephrine. The effect of epinephrine is to suppress inflammation by acting on specific subjects in the spleen. However, if the needle is not carried out until after the lipid polysaccharose injection, at this time another adrenaline has aggravated the inflammatory effect of the subject has been fat polysaccharine-induced expression, the electric needle stimulation has worsened the condition.
the same treatment produces diametrically opposed results at different stages of the disease, which is very surprising to us, " Professor Ma said. "But most of the time, patients come to the doctor who is usually sick and in an inflammatory state. So we hope to find a way to reduce inflammation. In
team tried to stimulate the electric needle with a "foot-three-in-three" point on the mouse's hind limbs. They found that using a weaker current of 0.5 milliamps, whether performed before or after the lipid polysaccharid injection, had the effect of suppressing inflammation. After treatment, the survival rate of mice was at least twice that of the control group.
using the
tool mice, the team found that low-intensity electrical stimulation did not stimulate the neural pathline from the spinal cord to the spleen, but activated the lost nerves that connect the brain to the adrenal glands, thereby reducing inflammation.
"Our study reveals the principles of neuroanatomy in electric needles, but the safety and effectiveness of this treatment in humans need to be further validated through clinical trials," Ma said.
team's next step is to continue exploring how different lower needle points and current strength activate different neural path paths to regulate inflammation. (Source: Science Network Tang 1 Dust)
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