The Clinical Effectiveness Of Electro-acupuncture On Depression And Study On Its Action Mechanism

Major depression is a common disease of Affective Disorder.Systematic studies on the treatment for major depression by electric acupuncture(EA)were performed in the aspects of experimental study and clinical study in this paper.Clinical studyThere are 54 cases with major depression were adpoted in this study,26 cases in EA group and 26 cases in control group."Baihui" and "Yingtang"were used when accepting EA."Yanglingquan" and "Sanyinjiao" were selected for the patients of hepatic stagnation accompanying splenic asthenia."Neiguan" and "Sanyinjiao" were selected for asthenic hepato-nephroyin.Patients in this group were given EA daily for 30 minutes for 6 weeks.Patients in control group were treated with 20mg Baiyoujie daily for 6 weeks.The results were as follows:Both EA and Baiyoujie were effective in treatment of major depression.For relieving endogenous depression Baiyoujie was better.The score of the syndrome of anxiety somatization and SAS of EA after treatment were significantly lower than that of Baiyoujie.The score of Asberg Rating Scale of Baiyoujie group was significantly higher than that EA group.Since Baiyoujie had more side effects than EA,so the efficacy index of EA group is significantly higher than Baiyoujie group.Experimental studyThirty two Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups:control group,model group,EA group and Baiyoujie group,8 rats in each group.All rats except the control group were singly housed and exposed chronically to a variety of mild unpredictable stressors for 21 days,and the rats of EA group were treated with electro-acupuncture at the same time.The resultsshowed that:1.Compared with control group,the weight increase was slow and the activities of rats in open-field test in model group were significantly decreased.EA can improve behavioal disorder of depression rats.2.The concentration of plasma ACTH and CORT were significantly increased in depression-model rats compared with those in control group.EA can regulate the levels of plasma ACTH and CORT and make them to be nearly normal.3.Mild chronic stress decreased the levels of NE and 5-HT in prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.EA can increase the levels of monoamine neurotransmitter in central nervous system.4.Immuno-histochemistry results showed that the number of BDNF positive neurons in hippocampus of depressed rats was much less than that of normal rats,but the number of positive c-fos neurons in model group was much more than that of control group.EA can increase the number and improve the appearance of BDNF neurons in the depressed rats,but decrease the number and influence the appearance of c-fos neurons in the depressed rats.In accordance with above comprehensive analysis,we can conclude that EA has curative effect for Major Depression.EA can regulate the imbalance of neuro-endocrino-immunologic net.The mechanism of EA in treating depression is the integrative regulation of multiple aspects and multiple targets.