Abstract
This study is aimed at investigating the association between the electroacupuncture (EA) pretreatment-induced protective effect against early cerebral ischemic injury and autophagy. EA pretreatment can protect cerebral ischemic and reperfusion injuries, but whether the attenuation of early cerebral ischemic injury by EA pretreatment was associated with autophagy is not yet clear. This study used the middle cerebral artery occlusion model to monitor the process of ischemic injury. For rats in the EA pretreatment group, EA pretreatment was conducted at Baihui acupoint before ischemia for 30 min for 5 consecutive days. The results suggested that EA pretreatment significantly increased the expression of autophagy in the cerebral cortical area on the ischemic side of rats. But the EA pretreatment-induced protective effects on the brain could be reversed by the specific inhibitor 3-methyladenine of autophagy. Additionally, the Pearson correlation analysis indicated that the impact of EA pretreatment on p-mTOR (2481) was negatively correlated with its impact on autophagy. In conclusion, the mechanism of EA pretreatment at Baihui acupoint against cerebral ischemic injury is mainly associated with the upregulation of autophagy expression, and its regulation of autophagy may depend on mTOR-mediated signaling pathways.
Highlights
Ischemic cerebrovascular disease is one of the most serious diseases that threaten people’s lives
The stability of blood-brain barrier is maintained by decreasing the activity of matrix metalloproteinase-9 [1,2,3]; the apoptosis of cells is inhibited by regulating adenosine receptor [4], opioid receptor [5], cannabinoid receptor [6,7,8,9], N-methylD-aspartate receptors [10], and intracellular activity
It was found that p-mTOR (2481) and light chain 3 (LC3)-II/LC3-I ratio were negatively correlated after EA treatment (r = −0.89, P = 0.04); P-mTOR (2448) and LC3-II/LC3-I ratio were not correlated (r = −0.34, P = 0.59)
Summary
Ischemic cerebrovascular disease is one of the most serious diseases that threaten people’s lives. Studies have discovered that electroacupuncture (EA) pretreatment has a protective effect on cerebral ischemic injury, and the mechanism is commonly thought to be a multitarget, multilevel, and multichannel integrated system. Our recent study further found that EA could alleviate cerebral reperfusion injury by inhibiting autophagy [11]. Recent studies hold that autophagy is a doubleedged sword in cell survival. Autophagy activation may promote cell survival by digesting the misfolded protein [12, 13]. Autophagy activation could exacerbate cerebral cell apoptosis [14, 15]. This study aimed to further investigate the association between the EA pretreatment-induced protective effect against early cerebral ischemic injury and autophagy
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