Mast Cell Function On The Effect Of Acupuncture Analgesia And Its Chinese Medicine Treatment Process Physical Stimuli-sensitive Mechanism

OBJECTIVE;To better understand the function of mast cells in acupuncture analgesia and test their sensitivity to mechanical,thermo and light as the physical stimulations during traditional Chinese medicine treatment in acupoints.METHODS;We made analgesia measurements by tail flick model and observed tissue slices of mast cell about density and degranulation ratio before/after acupuncture in animal experiment,and also,we used patch-clamp technique to investigate the activation of human mast cell(HMC-1 cell line)by mechanical stress or noxious heat and optically observed the degranulation phenomenon of mast cell in response to laser light.RESULTS;1.The manual stimulation by acupuncture at ST36 of rat resulted in analgesia and the effect was more pronounced than after stimulation of a sham point nearby the acupuncture point;2.The density of mast cells from ST36 of rat was higher than from nearby sham point,and acupuncture caused a remarkable increase in degranulation of the mast cells;3.Pretreatment of disodium chromoglycate(mast cell stabilizer)into acupuncture point not only counteracted the phenomenon of degranulation,but also impaired the analgesic effect of acupuncture;4.In the whole-cell patch-clamp configuration,increasing hydrostatic pressure(-30 to -90 cm H₂O applied via the patch pipette)induced a current that could be inhibited by 10μM of the specific inhibitor of TRPV2 ruthenium red(RuR).5.Temperatures above 50℃, that are reached during moxibustion,induced a similar RuR-sensitive current.6.Laser light of 640 nm applied to acupoints had been shown previously to be highly effective in analgesia.20 min of light application at 48 mW induced pronounced degranulation in HMC1,which could be blocked by 0.02g/ml DSCG as well as by the TRPV2 inhibitor RuR.CONCLUSIONS;We found that mechanical stimulation of acupoints is associated with mast cell degranulation and that mast-cell degranulation can be correlated with acupuncture-induced analgesia.We suggest that TRPV2 plays a key role in mast-cell degranulation directly in response to mechanical and moxibustion stimulation as well as laser-light forming a facilitating step in acupoint-stimulated analgesia.