Abstract
BackgroundAsthma has become an important public health issue and approximately 300 million people have suffered from the disease worldwide. Nowadays, the use of acupuncture in asthma is increasing. This study intended to systematically analyze and compare the gene expression profiles between the asthmatic and acupuncture-treated asthmatic rat lung, and tried to gain insight into the molecular mechanism underlying the early airway response (EAR) phase of asthma treated by acupuncture.MethodsFour tag libraries of serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) were established from lung tissues of control rats (CK), asthmatic rats (AS), asthmatic rats treated by acupuncture (ASAC), and control rats treated by acupuncture (CKAC). Bioinformatic analyses were carried out by using the methods including unsupervised hierarchical clustering, functional annotation tool of the database for annotation, visualization, and integrated discovery (DAVID), gene ontology (GO) tree machine, and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis.ResultsThere were totally 186 differentially expressed tags (P < 0.05, PCK/AS) between the libraries of CK and AS, 130 differentially expressed tags between libraries of AS/ASAC (P < 0.05, PAS/ASAC), and 144 differentially expressed tags between libraries of CK/CKAC (P < 0.05, PCK/CKAC). The gene expression profiles of AS and ASAC were more similar than other libraries via unsupervised SAGE clustering. By comparison of PCK/AS and PAS/ASAC, the DAVID genes functional classification was found to be changed from "immune response" to "response to steroid hormone stimulus", and the GO term "antigen processing and presentation of peptide antigen" disappeared in PAS/ASAC. Totally 3 same KEGG pathways were found among the three groups. Moreover, 21 specific tags of the acupuncture in treating asthma were detected using Venn diagrams.ConclusionOur SAGE research indicates that the gene expression profile of the EAR phase of asthma could be effectively and specifically regulated by acupuncture, which suggests that the gene expression of immune response and steroid hormone may play an important role in the treatment.
Highlights
Asthma has become an important public health issue and approximately 300 million people have suffered from the disease worldwide
The least significant difference (LSD) test for post hoc analysis indicated that RL in asthmatic rats treated by acupuncture (ASAC) group was significantly decreased at 1–4 min after challenge in comparison with asthmatic rats (AS) group (P < 0.05, Table 1), and Cdyn and respiratory rate (RR) in ASAC group were significantly increased at 2, 5 min and 2, 3 min respectively after challenge when compared with those of AS group (P < 0.05, see additional file 3)
The results indicated that the immediate effects (1–3 min) of acupuncture were the most significant in the early airway response (EAR) phase of asthma
Summary
Asthma has become an important public health issue and approximately 300 million people have suffered from the disease worldwide. The use of acupuncture in asthma is increasing. Asthma is a complex syndrome involving potentially permanent airway obstruction, airway hyperresponsiveness, and multicellular inflammation. It is estimated that approximately 300 million people have suffered from asthma worldwide and the burden of this disease in countries as well as families is increasing [1]. There are significant concerns regarding the potential side effects from the long term use of conventional drugs, such as corticosteroids. An effective, low-risk, and non-drug strategy would provide a valuable and adjunctive treatment in asthma management [3]. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), such as traditional Chinese herbal remedies, homeopathy as well as acupuncture, is widely applied in the asthma management. It is reported that CAM has been used among 59% of patients with asthma or rhinosinusitis in the United Kingdom, 41% in the United States, 26.5% in Germany, and 27.2% in Singapore [4]
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