Using MicroPET Imaging in Quantitative Verification of Acupuncture Effect in Ischemia Stroke Treatment

Xiaoyan Shen,Ting Xiang,Hongtu Tang,Weichuan Yu,Jia Li,Huafeng Liu

doi:10.1038/npre.2010.4128.1

Abstract

AbstractWhile acupuncture has survived several thousand years’ evolution of medical practice, its function still remains as a myth from the view point of modern medicine. Our goal in this paper is to quantitatively understand the function of acupuncture in ischemia stroke treatment. We carried out a comparative study using the Sprague Dawley rat animal model. We induced the focal cerebral ischemia in the rats using the middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) procedure. For each rat from the real acupuncture group (n = 40), sham acupoint treatment group (n = 54), and blank control group (n = 16), we acquired 3-D FDG-microPET images at baseline, after MCAO, and after treatment (i.e., real acupuncture, sham acupoint treatment, or resting according to the group assignment), respectively. After verifying that the injured area is in the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex in the brain by using magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) and triphenyl tetrazolium cchloride (TTC)-staining, we directly compared the glucose metabolism in the right hemisphere of each rat. We carried out t-test and permutation test on the image data. Both tests demonstrated that acupuncture had a more positive effect than non-acupoint stimulus and blank control (P < 0.025) in increasing the glucose metabolic level in the stroke-injured area in the brain, while there was no statistically significant difference between non-acupoint stimulus and blank control (P>0.15). The immediate positive effect of acupuncture over sham acupoint treatment and blank control is verified using our experiments. The long-term benefit of acupuncture needs to be further studied.

Highlights

The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative
Unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material
To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. This version is available at HKUST Institutional Repository via http://hdl.handle.net/1783.1/55573. If it is the author’s pre-published version, changes introduced as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing and formatting may not be reflected in this document

Summary

Introduction

The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative. Unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. If it is the author’s pre-published version, changes introduced as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing and formatting may not be reflected in this document. This paper studies the effect of acupuncture in ischemia stroke treatment using the Sprague Dawley rat animal model. For each rat in the real acupuncture group (n 5 63), the sham acupoint treatment group

Methods

Results

Conclusion