Abstract
Osteosarcoma is the most common malignant bone tumor found in children and adolescents and is associated with many complications including cancer pain and metastasis. While cancer patients often seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches to treat cancer pain and fatigue or the side effects of chemotherapy and treatment, there is little known about the effect of acupuncture treatment on tumor growth and metastasis. Here we evaluate the effects of six different electroacupuncture (EA) regimens on osteosarcoma tumor growth and metastasis in both male and female mice. The most significant positive effects were observed when EA was applied to the ST-36 acupoint twice weekly (EA-2X/3) beginning at postimplantation day 3 (PID 3). Twice weekly treatment produced robust reductions in tumor growth. Conversely, when EA was applied twice weekly (EA-2X/7), starting at PID 7, there was a significant increase in tumor growth. We further demonstrate that EA-2X/3 treatment elicits significant reductions in tumor lymphatics, vasculature, and innervation. Lastly, EA-2X/3 treatment produced a marked reduction in pulmonary metastasis, thus providing evidence for EA's potential antimetastatic capabilities. Collectively, EA-2X/3 treatment was found to reduce both bone tumor growth and lung metastasis, which may be mediated in part through reductions in tumor-associated vasculature, lymphatics, and innervation.
Highlights
There has been a dramatic increase in the use of complementary and alternative medicine approaches to treat cancer patients suffering from oncological pain, fatigue and the side effects of chemotherapy [1,2,3,4,5], despite limited research available to support their use [6]
Since EA-2X/3 elicited the most robust and longest-lasting decrease in tumor growth, we focused our analysis of the effect of EA on tumor lymphatics, vasculature and innervation in tumor animals treated with EA-2X/3 that were euthanized on PID 21
We focused our attention on the effect of EA-2X/3 treatment on metastasis from the hindpaw to the lungs, since this treatment regimen was the most effective in reducing tumor growth and reducing lymphatics within the tumor
Summary
There has been a dramatic increase in the use of complementary and alternative medicine approaches to treat cancer patients suffering from oncological pain, fatigue and the side effects of chemotherapy [1,2,3,4,5], despite limited research available to support their use [6]. Since acupuncture has been shown to have both immunoregulatory and anti-inflammatory effects, acupuncture could potentially affect tumor growth by inducing changes in the immune system and/or by producing direct effects on tumor associated inflammation [9,10,11,12]. While many studies have examined drug effects on these mechanisms, the potential for alternative medicine approaches, acupuncture, to affect cancer growth and metastasis has not been explored. We hypothesized that low-frequency EA has antitumor growth and antimetastatic effects, by inducing alterations in tumorassociated vasculature, lymphatics, and innervation densities To test this hypothesis, we utilized a hind paw osteosarcoma mouse model developed at the University of Minnesota [25] to examine the above relationships in vivo
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