A gene called 5’-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), in
the hypothalamus of brain is found to determine your responsiveness to
acupuncture analgesia, according to a study published in the journal BMC
Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Although acupuncture is now widely used to treat a range
of pain conditions, there are some subjects, in many acupuncture analgesia
experimental and clinical studies did not respond well, which is difficult to
explain.
Researchers in Korea conducted an experimental study to
find the factors in the brain determining the sensitivity to acupuncture
analgesia in a pain model. Using molecular biotechnologies such as cDNA microarray
analysis and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, they looked the
expression levels of different genes in the hypothalamus, a pain responder
region in brain of the subjects. It was found that the levels of gene AMPK was
significantly higher in the pain responder subjects than those of non-responder
subjects. Further studies showed that inhibition of AMPK expression in the
brain attenuated acupuncture-induced analgesic effect in responder subjects.
The studies demonstrated that the levels of AMPK gene
expression in the hypothalamus region of brain may determine the individual
differences in the sensitivity to acupuncture-induced analgesia.
Reference:
Kim SK et al.,
Expression levels of the hypothalamic AMPK gene determines the responsiveness
of the rats to electroacupuncture-induced analgesia. BMC Complementary and
Alternative Medicine 2014, 14:211 doi:10.1186/1472-6882-14-211. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/14/211
No comments:
Post a Comment