Muscular dystrophy has a profound effect on patient’s
daily life, especially physical activities. How to prevent muscle atrophy is
critical for maintaining quality of life. Acupuncture was reported to be able
to partially prevent skeletal muscle atrophy in a basic research study,
according to the results published in journal of Biochemical and Biophysical
Research Communications.
Muscular dystrophy is a group of muscle diseases that is
characterised by the progressive muscle weakness, defects in muscle proteins
and eventually death of muscle cells. It is a group of inherited genetic
conditions due to the mutation of the specific genes that cause the changes in
muscle structure and muscle dysfunction. Muscular dystrophy could happen in any
age group depending on the genes affected. The common symptom of muscular
dystrophy is gradually muscle weakness of affected part of body. There is no
cure for the condition and conventional approaches are only temporarily symptom
relief.
Researchers in Japan considered acupuncture in place of exercise
training is an alternative non-pharmacological therapy that might prevent
muscle atrophy and evaluated effects of acupuncture on skeletal muscle atrophy
caused by hindlimb-suspension in mice, a model of muscular dystrophy.
Acupuncture needles were inserted into gastrocnemius muscle of hindlimb-suspended
mice with or without electro-stimulation for 30 min a day for 2 weeks. At the
end of acupuncture biomedical techniques including molecular biology were
employed to study the changes in affected muscle including the alterations in
gene expression.
It was found that muscle mass was significantly reduced
by hindlimb-suspension. Acupuncture especially electroacupuncture significantly
improved muscle mass, although the level of improvement was insufficient
compared with normal control. Acupuncture down-regulated the genes involved in
muscle degeneration and up-regulated the genes involved in muscle protein
synthesis.
Authors suggested that acupuncture partially prevented
muscle atrophy due to its action to modulate the genes involved in muscle
protein synthesis.
Reference
A Onda et al., Acupuncture
ameliorated skeletal muscle atrophy induced by hindlimb suspension in mice. Biochemical
and Biophysical Research Communications 410 (2011) 434–439. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21672518
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