Tranquilizing and Allaying Excitement Needling Method Affects BDNF and SYP Expression in Hippocampus.

Peng Zheng,Xiaohong Xu,Tingting Lv,Hongyan Zhao,Bailin Song,Fuchun Wang

doi:10.1155/2017/8215949

Abstract

Sleep disorder is a state of sleep loss caused by various reasons, which leads to a series of changes, such as emotion, learning and memory, and immune function. “Tranquilizing and allaying excitement” was widely used in clinical treatment of insomnia; however, the mechanism was still not very clear. We randomly divided rats into three groups: control group, sleep deprivation group, and acupuncture treatment group. We observed BDNF and SYP expression in hippocampus in these three groups. Both protein contents and mRNA contents of BDNF and SYP were measured by western blot, immunohistochemistry, and RT-PCR analysis. The sleep deprivation model was established using modified multiple platform sleep deprivation method (MMPM). Our study explored the BDNF and SYP abnormality in hippocampus caused by sleep deprivation and “tranquilizing and allaying excitement” intervention regulated the abnormal expression of BDNF and SYP caused by sleep deprivation on the short run and the long run. Our study provided a molecular evidence that “tranquilizing and allaying excitement” treatment in rats with sleep disorder affects learning and memory ability.

Highlights

Acupuncture was a well-known traditional Chinese medicine [1,2,3]
Both the relative expression level of BDNF mRNA which was measured by RT-PCR detection and that of the BDNF protein contents which was measured by western blot indicated that the BDNF contents of the control group were maintained in a relatively normal state; the BDNF expression level in sleep deprivation group was gradually decreased along with sleep deprivation time, which was significantly higher than the control group at 24 h hours but lower than the control group at 96 h (p < 0.05)
The BDNF level was slightly increased after 6 h of sleep deprivation and was significantly dropped after 96 h of sleep deprivation [19], which was coinciding with our experiment

Summary

Introduction

Acupuncture was a well-known traditional Chinese medicine [1,2,3]. Tranquilizing and allaying excitement needling method was acupuncture at a group of points to treat insomnia and it was often used in the clinical practice [4]. “tranquilizing and allaying excitement” acupuncture had significant effect on the treatment of insomnia in the clinic, the mechanism was not clear [5, 6]. It has been reported that sleep deprivation impaired learning and memory ability in both rats and mice [7,8,9,10], acupuncture had clinical effect on the treatment of insomnia [11], and our experiment was to discover whether acupuncture could improve the learning and memory ability impaired by sleep deprivation in rats. We measured BDNF contents in the hippocampus in the sleep deprivation group and acupuncture group. The SYP contents in both the mRNA level and protein level in the hippocampus were measured in the sleep deprivation group and acupuncture group. We were trying to figure out the expression level change of BDNF and SYP in the hippocampus after sleep

Methods

Results

Conclusion