| Knee osteoarthritis(KOA) is one kind of common chronic disease among older adults. Its clinical symptoms include knee pain, swelling, movement disorder, pathological features and soft tissue lesions of knee cartilage cell apotheosis. Most patients have not payed enough attention to treatment in the early stage. To avoid pain, patients usually reduce activity, which can result in partial disuse atrophy and joint stiffness, seriously affecting the quality of life. Therefore, early treatment is the key to controlling this disease. Warm-needle moxibustion is the combination of acupuncture and moxibustion, which can channel partial blood vessel and dispel coldness. Warm-needle moxibustion has the advantages of easy to operate, significant effect, and inexpensive, especially suits early intervention. Modern medicine, under the action of cytokines in cartilage in the knee joint cartilage matrix synthesis and degradation of an important cause of imbalances caused by osteoarthritis of the knee, in which inflammatory cytokines in cartilage matrix degradation plays a significant role in the structure, and warm acupuncture can reduce the expression of inflammatory cytokines. Among cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-a) is an important immune regulatory factors maintain homeostasis in the body, which can be induced by activation of cytokines increase the inflammatory response, and play a key role in the course of osteoarthritis of the knee. Matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) can be passed directly into the cartilage matrix degradation of extracellular polysaccharide. Studies show that TNF-a and MMP-3 may have a positive correlation, by detecting articular cartilage can effectively distinguish levels of these two factors in severity of osteoarthritis of the knee, but its specificity have yet to be verified. This subject had meant to use warm-needle moxibustion as treating measure to observe the change among rabbits with KOA, including the behavior modification and the levels of TNF-a and MMP-3 in knee cartilage.This paper means to discuss warming needle moxibustion on knee osteoarthritis of the mechanisms and effects through two main section. The first part includes two theory researches, review the progress of treatment for KOA in Chinese and Western medicine in nearly 10 years, including currently KOA diagnosis standard, Chinese and Western medicine on KOA of awareness and the treatment progress, and combined acupuncture mechanism of modern research overview acupuncture treatment KOA mechanism of research status. The second part introduces the experimental operation and discusses problems arising during the experiment like the animal models of choice, the reason for choosing point and the analysis of results.Objective To observe the effect of warm-needle moxibustion on the behavior modification and the levels of TNF-a and MMP-3 in knee cartilage of rabbits with KOA so as to explore the mechanism in treatment.Methods Thirty male Japanese white rabbits were randomly divided into normal, model and treatment groups (n=10 in each group). The rabbits in model and treatment groups were made to be KOA models with immobilization method. Take behavioral observation of rabbits in each group. Rabbits in the treatment group were used acupoints of internal and external Dubi (ST35), Xuehai (SP10) and Yanglingquan (GB34) to acupuncture with moxibustion. After 4 weeks, take behavioral observation of rabbits in each group again, cut off cartilage of the knee for HE staining, and detect the levels of TNF-a and MMP-3 in knee joint cartilage by radioimmunoassay.Results The behavior evaluation of the treatment group was superior to the model group, so was the sample statu and the HE staining. TNF-a and MMP-3 levels of the treatment group were higher than the levels of normal group, while significantly reduced compared to the model group.Conclusion Warm-needle moxibustion therapy can improve the function of knee cartilage of rabbits with KOA. Reduce the level of TNF-a and MMP-3 in articular cartilage may be an aspect of its mechanisms. |
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