| Anxiety disorder is a mental disorder, mainly characterized by anxiety, fear, tension and other negative emotions and often accompanied by autonomic nerve disorder, muscular tension and exercise-induced anxiety. It is clinically divided into two major forms:generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic attack. GAD is an anxiety disorder with the primary symptom of reoccurring panic attacks primary, but it is not limited to any specific situation and thus is unpredictable. Panic attack is an anxiety disorder that mainly presents being on tenterhooks absent of a specific object and content, as well as nervousness. It often comes with obvious vegetative nervous symptoms, muscular tension and exercise-induced anxiety. According to the statistics of epidemiological investigations in 12 areas in China in 1982, the time-point prevalence of anxiety disorder in China is 1.48%o, while that in foreign countries was 25%o-64%o, and it tends to go up with the increase of social economic pressures. Now it has become one of the common and frequently-occurring diseases and has a severe impact on patients’ quality of life. To deal with such disorder, modern medicine mainly choose drug therapy that undoubtedly has notable curative effectiveness, but produces obvious side reactions, such as addition, nausea, anorexia, high price and poor patients’ compliance, etc. TCM therapies for anxiety disorder are mainly based on the principle of treatment based on syndrome differentiation. From the perspective of integrated regulation, TCM has various treatment methods, remarkable curative effect and higher safety than modern medicine. Also, it can obviously improve patients’digestive tract symptoms while producing anxiolytic effect. Thus, it has attracted attentions from scholars at home and abroad. However, researches on anxiety disorder itself based on TCM have been proven quite limited, and less research is executed in digestive disturbances caused by anxiety disorder, making it hard to tap the advantages of TCM-based therapies in improving digestive disturbances among patients with anxiety disorder.Traditional Chinese medicine held that palpitation, severe palpitation, guilt complex due to heart blood insufficiency, lantern disease and kidney amassment and so on are associated with anxiety disorder. Although there are no simple and direct equivalence between these disease names, they laid a foundation for studies on the etiology and pathogenesis of anxiety disorder and its treatment based on modern medicine. Since there has been no consensus on the syndrome differentiation of this disease, most of current studies start from physician’s individual treatment based on syndrome differentiation by numerous means, making it hard to reflect its characteristics of syndrome. With the deepening of studies on anxiety disorder, more and more studies indicate that there are six common types of syndromes:liver depression and spleen deficiency, liver depression transforming into fire, kidney deficiency with liver hyperactivity, heart disturbed by phlegm-fire, heart-spleen deficiency and heart-kidney imbalance. These syndromes were recorded in a complex way in all ages, but they can be summarized as follows:dysphoria, cowardly fright, palpitation due to fright, palpitation and even severe palpitation, fullness in chest and hypochondrium, appetite decrease, numbness and tremble of extremities, insomnia, amnesia, etc. Seen from the common types of syndromes and syndromes themselves of anxiety disorder, the occurrence of this disease is closely associated with liver-spleen disharmony.Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the liver is associated with wood and governs conveyance and dispersion so as to properly adjust qi movement, regulate emotion and strengthens the spleen; the spleen is associated with earth and governs transportation and transformation, that is to say, generating qi and blood to nurture the foundation of acquired constitution. The liver governs conveyance and dispersion, but it is very like to fail to convey and disperse, which results in stagnation of liver qi and conveyance and dispersion dysfunction, leading to spleen-stomach dysfunction and the liver (wood) restricting the spleen (earth), characterized by negativity, poor adaption and other mental symptoms. Its effects on the functions of the spleen and stomach are generally reflected by diarrhea, weight loss, decrease of diet and other symptoms. According to traditional Chinese medicine, the spleen and stomach depend on each other physiologically. In other words, wood makes earth smooth, earth makes wood grow, and liver (wood) depression leads to spleen dysfunction. It is required to treat liver and spleen together. Therefore, soothing liver and strengthening spleen often bring benefits to patients with anxiety disorder in clinic.Substance P (SP) is one of the first discovered neuropeptides. It is mainly distributed in small nerve fibers and widely distributed in central and peripheral nerve systems and various organs, but its content in peripheral nerve systems is lower than that in the central nerve system. SP has an extremely strong simulation on gastric smooth muscle cells via a specific nervous pathway. Widespread in the nervous system of gastrointestinal muscle cells, SP can strengthen the contraction of intestinal smooth muscle, peristalsis and gastric emptying, stimulate the gallbladder to shrink and involve in the regulations on various physiological functions, thus playing a key role in regulating gastrointestinal function. Now there are a few researches on the association between SP and mental disorder, but some have reported the increased SP content in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with mental disorder. For this, abnormal central nervous system acts on the digestive system via brain-gut axis with resort to brain-gut pitied, and various stimulations caused by gastrointestinal dysfunctions and lesions may be fed back to the central nervous system and then have an influence on people’s emotion. And is it possible that the SP content in gastrointestinal tract changes in patients with anxiety disorder? Does traditional Chinese compound prescription plays a role in regulating the SP content in gastrointestinal tract? In this study, we suggest to treat rats with anxiety disorder with Xiaoyao Powder and observe the changes of the SP content in gastrointestinal tract in each group.Objective:Based on the established model of rats with chronic restrained stress anxiety, this research project is to discuss the association between SP content and anxiety disorder as well as the regulating role of Xiaoyao Powder and provide theoretical bases for the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorder through observations on rats’behavioristics of the anxiety disorder model and the SP content in gastrointestinal tract.Methods:(1) 20 male rats were randomly divided into 4 groups:normal group, model group, western medicine group and TCM group. The rats in the normal group were fed normally, while those in each other group were restrained for 3h each day to establish a chronic restrained stress model of rats with anxiety disorder. At the same time, the normal group were given intragastric administration of normal saline, the TCM group Xiaoyao Poweder, and the western medicine group fluoxetine. The modeling and treatment lasted for 14 days in total. The success of the modeling was assessed by observing rats’ macroscopic representations, body weights, the elevated plus-maze test (EPM) and novelty suppressed feeding test (NSF). (2) Fundi of stomach and doudenal bulbs of rats were sampled after sacrificing rats in each group at the end of the 14-day modeling period. The changes of SP contents in the fundi of stomach and doudenal bulbs of rats in each group as well as the regulating role of Xiaoyao Powder were observed by Elisa testing.Results:(1) The body weight result of each group:At 7th after modeling, the body weight of model group was lower than that of normal group, there being significant difference(P<0.01), while body weight of the fluoxetine group and Xiaoyao Powder group were both higher than that of normal group, there being significant differences (P<0.05, P<0.01). At 14th after modeling, the body weight of fluoxetine group was higher than that of model group, there being significant differences (P<0.05). (2) The behavioristics results of each group:①At 14th after modeling, the open arms entrance times of model group was less than that of normal group, there being significant difference(P<0.01), while the open arms entrance times of fluoxetine group and Xiaoyao Powder group were both more than those of model group, there being differences (P<0.05, P<0.01). ② At 14th after modeling, the open arms detention durations of model group was less than that of normal group, there being difference (P<0.05), while the open arms detention durations of fluoxetine group and Xiaoyao Powder group were both longer than those of model group, there being differences (P<0.05, P<0.01).③ At 14th after modeling, the total distance of model group was shorter than that of normal group, there being significant difference (P<0.01). (3) The SP content in the fundi of stomach in the model group was greatly lowered than that of the normal group (P<0.01), while there was no significant difference between the Xiaoyao Powder group and the fluoxetine group (P>0.05); compared with the model group, the SP content in the Xiaoyao Powder group was significantly increased than (P<0.01), but that in the fluoxetine group showed no obvious change (P>0.05); compared with the Xiaoyao Powder group, the SP content in the fluoxetine group was significantly decreased (P<0.05). ② The content of SP in model group was lower than that in normal group, there being difference (P<0.05). While the content of SP in fluoxetine group and Xiaoyao Powder group were both higher than that in model group, there being, there being significant difference (P<0.01). The contents of SP in fluoxetine group was higher than that in normal group, there being significant difference (P<0.05).Conclusions:(1) Rat model of anxiety disorder can be successfully built by the 14-day chronic restrained stress method. (2) Both Xiaoyao Powder and fluoxetine can improve the SP content in gastrointestinal tract of rats with anxiety disorder. |
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