The effect of acupuncture on tumor growth and gut microbiota in mice inoculated with osteosarcoma cells

Xiaoru Xu,Tie Li,Xiangru Feng,Haiyu Zhu,Zepeng Zhang,Min He,Fuchun Wang,Mengmeng Sun,Zhihong Wang,Jiajia Wang

doi:10.1186/s13020-020-00315-z

Abstract

BackgroundCancer is a complex systemic disease. As a key component of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture is a clinically proven medical treatment for many diseases, and it also has preventative effects as it balances the body, allowing it to self-regulate. For cancer patients, acupuncture is widely used as complementary therapy to boost the immune system and reduce the side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. However, few studies have determined how acupuncture against cancer, especially in regulating the intestinal flora of the tumor-burdened mice.MethodsWe treated osteosarcoma tumor-burdened mice by using needling on different acupoints and acupoints combination, thereafter determined the effects of acupuncture on tumor growth by using imaging technology in vitro. In addition, intestinal bacteria were analyzed for further understanding the holistic and systemic treatment effects of acupuncture in osteosarcoma tumor-burdened mice.ResultsAcupuncture treatment can delay tumor growth and changes of intestinal bacteria in osteosarcoma tumor-burdened mice. In detail, the loss of body weight and the development of tumor volume of mice have been postposed by needling specific acupoints. In addition, acupuncture treatment has delayed the changes of the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Candidatus Saccharibacteria at the phylum level. Moreover, the relative abundance of many bacteria (e.g., Catabacter, Acetatifactor and Aestuariispira) has been regulated by using acupuncture treatment, and the trend of structural changes of these bacteria at the genus level has also been postposed compared to that of the tumor-burdened mice model group.ConclusionOur results suggest that acupuncture may provide a systemic treatment for cancer. Our findings encourage new and extensive research into the effects of acupuncture on changes of the intestinal microbiome associated with the development of cancer.

Highlights

The results showed acupuncture treatment can delay tumor growth and changes of intestinal bacteria in osteosarcoma tumor-burdened mice, thereby providing new insights into the investigation of acupuncture treatment
The effect of acupuncture on burdened tumor can be attribute to delay of tumor growth
Almost all the results in gut microbiota study have shown that the significantly different level of bacteria between control and model group, the expression of bacteria of acupuncture treatment group was in between of control and model group. These results demonstrated that acupuncture treatment adjusted the expression of specific bacteria, and leaded to the relatively slow changes of bacteria compared to the model group

Summary

Introduction

An increasing number of comparative studies have shown that there are differences in gut microbiota composition between cancer patients and healthy individuals, and the occurrence of cancer often causes or accompanies changes of the intestinal flora [21,22,23]. Those reported cancers with changes in intestinal flora include gastrointestinal cancers (e.g., stomach and colorectal cancer) [15, 16], but other cancer types as well (e.g., pancreas, liver, prostate, and breast cancer) [24,25,26,27,28,29]. As research provides evidence and expands our understanding of carcinogenic mechanisms, studies on intestinal flora present many more opportunities to develop therapies for cancer diagnosis and management

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