| Ischemic stroke is a common disease in clinic with which patients often remain some sequela. It has been proved in clinic practice that acupuncture has effect on ischemic stroke, especially on its sequela. However, researchers paid most attention to neural protection mechanism in the past when they studied the influence of acupuncture on ischemic stroke in lab, little about neurogenesis after ischemia. Recently, several experimental papers[1,2,3,4] reported that acupuncture, ginsenoside, tortoise platron and Niu Bo Zhi Bao Wei Wan increased cell proliferation or nestin expression in rat brain after ischemia respectively, which initially proved Chinese medical therapy do affect neurogenesis after ischemic stroke.Objective To explain the possible mechanism of acupuncture on stroke sequela, we studied the effects of electro-acupuncture on neural stem cell proliferation and migration, also compared the differences between electro-acupuncture, astragalus, taurine, and electro-acupuncture combined with astragalus.Methods A local brain ischemia model was made by occluding middle cerebral artery with an intraluminal suture. Neurological deficit score and infarct volume in all groups were compared to estimate ischemic injury. To evaluate the roles of electro-acupuncture, astragalus, taurine, and electro-acupuncture combined with astragalus in neurogenesis after ischemia, expression of nestin was calculated as markers of neural stem cell, also BrdU incorporation and PSA-NCAM expression as markers of proliferation and migration. Results There were no effects of those therapies on rat death ratio, when functional improvements were found in taurine and electro-acupuncture combined with astragalus groups(respectively at 5,6,7,9 or 6,7 day after ischemia, P<0.05), taurine also markedly reduced infarct volume on day 14 after ischemia(P<0.01). The expression of nestin and BrdU in cortex, ependyma and dentate gyrus were elevated after ischemia(P<0.05 or P<0.01), and some cells were found double immunolabeling. PSA-NCAM was only detected increasing in dentate gyrus(P<0.01). We also found that in dentate gyrus electro-acupuncture improved the expression of nestin on day 7 after stroke(P<0.05), and taurine depressed cell proliferation on day 14 after ischemia. Nestin expression in cortex was improved by electro-acupuncture combined with astragalus on day 7 , while it increased BrdU incorporation in cortex on day 14(P<0.05).Conclusion Our data indicated that neural stem cells proliferated, migrated after ischemic injury. Electro-acupuncture could increase neural stem cells in dentate gyrus after ischemia, electro-acupuncture combined with astragalus could increase neural stem cells and their proliferation in ischemic cortex. It was not proved precisely in our experiment that electro-acupuncture combined with astragalus had a better affect than electro-acupuncture used only on stem cells after ischemia. The effect of taurine inhibiting cell proliferation in dentate gyrus might be related to its role of attenuating ischemic injury.
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