Effects Of Acupuncture And Drug Injection At Low Hydraulic Resistance Channel Along Stomach Meridian On The Myoelectrical Activity Of Stomach

Effects of Acupuncture and Drug Injection at Low Hydraulic Resistance Channel along Stomach Meridian on the Myoelectrical Activity of Pig's StomachBackgroundRecent findings show the important role of interstitial fluid in transmitting different kinds of signals including those induced from acupuncture, and this might be a milestone in clarifying and substantiating the ancient meridians. Being introduced in 1997, Low hydraulic resistance channel (LHRC) along the acupuncture meridian is a kinds of channel through which extracellular fluid flows easier according to Darcy's law for porous medium hydrodynamics.AimThis study was designed to determine the influence of stomach meridian on stomach by acupuncture and drug injection through low hydraulic resistance channel.Methods and MaterialsThe experiment was done on 8 healthy anesthetized small pigs. For each pig the stomach myoelectrical activity was measured and recorded by an intelligent double channels gastrointestinal electrograph meter (EGG), before and after the following interventions:1-Intramuscular injection of Metoclopramide 2-Intramuscular injection of Normal Saline 3-Injecting Metoclopramide into LHRC along stomach meridian (LHRC was detected by a two-pressure transducer measuring system) 4-Acupuncture at ST36 (Zu San Li). After these four interventions which were done every other day, LHRC was blocked by injecting polyacrylamide hydrogel into two separate points on stomach meridian and electrogastrograms were evaluated before and after two further procedures:5-Injecting Metoclopramide into LHRC along stomach meridian proximal to the block points 6-Acupuncture at ST36 (which is proximal to the block points). Results:Values for peak-to-peak amplitude (μVpp), mean dominant frequency (F in cpm) and Root-mean-square power (Ra inμV) were increased extremely significant in intervention number 1 (P<0.001) and increased significantly in intervention number 3 (P<0.05). There were no significant changes in these variables in intervention number 2. In intervention number 4, Vpp and Ra were significantly decreased (P<0.05) but F did not show significant changes (P>0.1). All the three variables in the fifth and sixth interventions were not significantly changed after the intervention (P>0.1), however Vpp and Ra were slightly increased in intervention number 5 and slightly decreased in intervention number 6.Conclusion:The first and the second interventions were designed as a control for EGG machine and the gastric exciting effects of Metoclopramide. The results show that non-invasive EGG can be a reliable method to detect myoelectrical changes induced by Metoclopramide. Intervention number 4 proposed that acupuncture on stomach meridian have certain myoelectrical effects on the stomach, which in our study was a decreasing in power. As drug injection and acupuncture could not significantly affect the stomach power after blocking LHRC along stomach meridian (interventions 5 & 6), we conclude that LHRC along meridian guides or partly guides the signal from acupuncture and drug injection to stomach, so a gastric related physiological function for LHRC along stomach meridian is strongly recommended, which might be a step forward for clarifying the ancient theory of meridians and how they are related to the internal organs.