Acupuncture Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Acupuncture, including details on alternative medicine, uses, benefits, treatment, chinese medicine.

Electroacupuncture alters the expression of genes associated with lipid metabolism and immune reaction in liver of hypercholesterolemia mice.

Kang Y, Li M, Yan W, Li X, Kang J, Zhang Y

College of Life Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610064, PR China.

Acupuncture or electroacupuncture (EA) is effective in treating various metabolism disorders. Previously we found that EA at the acupoint, Fenglong (ST40), had the cholesterol-lowering effect and regulated genes expression in liver of hypercholesterolemia mice (M Li and YZ Zhang, Int J Mol Med 2007, 19: 617-629). To explain gene expression associated with EA, suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH), combined with targeted display (TD), was used and 26 up-regulated and 24 down-regulated genes with known functions were identified in hypercholesterolemia mice liver, some of which are involved in key reactions of lipid metabolism and immune reaction. Promoting lipid metabolism and suppressing inflammation via modulating mRNA expression may be the mechanism of EA inducing modulation of cholesterol concentrations.

Published 30 October 2007 in Biotechnol Lett, 29(12): 1817-24.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Acupuncture Research Today. All Rights Reserved.