The Metabolic Response Mechanism Of Acupuncture And Moxibustion And The Development Of Acupoints Database

Acupuncture and moxibustion,a representative of the external therapy,is an important part of traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM).It stimulate specific regions of body by needles or moxa cone to conditioning treatment of disease.As a complementary and alternative medicine,acupuncture and moxibustion has proven to be integrated regulation in multiple systems and organs by clinical practice and experimental investigation.It has been widely used for health care,disease prevention and symptoms alleviation.Stimulating acupuncture points of the body by needles is an integrated regulation on intrinsic neuro-endocrine-immune systems of body.However,there are still lack of reasonable assessment on the benefic effects of acupuncture and moxibustion.Scientific proofs of metabolic responses and their molecular mechanism related to acupuncture and moxibustion are deficient.There is of great significance to demonstrate the distinguishing metabolic responses between acupuncture and moxibustion.In this study,NMR-based metabolomics is applied to study the metabolic response mechanism of electro-acupuncture and moxibustion when stimulating the Stomach Meridian(SM)or Gallbladder Meridian(GM)acupoints.On the other hand,an acupoints database is developed to establish the relationship between symptoms and acupoints combination.The main contents are as follows:First,distinguishing metabolic responses to electro-acupuncture and moxibustion stimulation were studied by 1H NMR-based metabolomics.It is shown that each intervention shares exactly similar metabolic network reflecting the similar metabolic response of organism no matter which meridian we stimulate.Metabolic differences between interventions lie in the significance of pathways,i.e.their importance ranking on the topological structure of enrichment analysis.For both SM and GM acupoints,regulations of purine metabolism/purinergic signaling,energy production of TCA cycle,glycolysis,and function-connected branched-chain amino acids metabolism are recognized in both electro-acupuncture and moxibustion treatment,suggesting global efficacy on enhanced immunomodulation and accelerated energy metabolism.The fact that electro-acupuncture treatment play a unique role in protein metabolism including alanine and aspartate metabolism,glycine,serine and threonine metabolism,pyruvate metabolism along with glutamine metabolism in central nervous system indicates more sensitive and effective of electro-acupuncture than moxibustion in treating gastrointestinal disturbance,relieving inflammatory pain,postoperative analgesia,and eliminating fatigue etc.Only for GM acupoints,enhancement of fatty acid ?-oxidation and possible neuromodulation are labelled out as markers distinct from SM acupoints.Especially in phenylalanine and tyrosine metabolism,moxibustion upregulate the synthesis of catecholamines(noradrenaline and dopamine)after stimulating the SM acupoints,whereas the excretion of adrenaline and dopamine is downregulated by electro-acupuncture after stimulating the GM acupoints.This phenomenon reflects a complicated interaction between meridian functionality and interventional specificity.Secondly,we develop an acupoints database for concentrated storage and analysis of acupuncture and moxibustion prescriptions.The forms of present acupoint database includes acupuncture form and information form.Acupuncture form contains the basic information of acupuncture points whereas the data of information form comes from literature,books,web pages and so on.Information form includes data of diseases,symptoms and acupoints combinations in the source.Graphical user interface of database is constructed by Python language for the purpose of convenient using.Data writing roles are strictly prescribed to avoid input errors.In this study,NMR spectroscopy,pattern recognition and database techniques are combined to analyze distinguishing metabolic responses between electro-acupuncture and moxibustion.It is provided a scientific basis for selecting TCM interventions to disease.The developed database builds the connection of acupoints and symptoms,manage acupoints prescriptions from literatures and raise the possibility for mining rules of acupoints combination.