| Objective: Rheumatoid Arthritis(RA) is a kind of autoimmune disease that seriously threat the human' s health .The good effect of acupuncture on rheumatoid arthritis such as antiinflammation, analgesia and immunoregulation have been proved. It was suggested that the mechanism of immunoregulation function and analgesia of acupuncture may be related to -endorphin(-Ep) and enkephalin, In this experiment, we tested -eiidoiphin content in blood plasma and tissue of rats. Our aim was to further study the mechanism of 3 -endorphin about analgesia and immunoregulation of acupuncture in RA. And we provided the experimental evidences for electroacupuncture and moxibustion possibly being of the clinical use.Methods: Wister rats were randomly divided into five groups i.e. normal control group, model group, moxibustion group, electroacupuncture group and moxibustion-felectroacupuncture group, 8 rats each. The model of adjuvant arthritis(AA) rats was induced by intracutaneously injection of complete Freuds adjuvant (including BCG) in the right hind foot pat of rat. In this paper, "shenque" acupoint received moxibustion and " kunlun " acupoint. received electroacupuncture were studied. We observed the effect of acupuncture on AA rats with the indexes i. e. general condition, weight, toe swelling and pain reaction, and detected -Ep content in blood plasma and inflammatory tissue of rats by radio immunoassay(RIA). All data collected were analyzed with SPSS statistical analysis software.Results: The results show that the pain threshold improved, toe swelling vanished and the level of 0 -Ep in blood plasma and inflammatory tissue increased significantly(P<0.05) after treatment with acupuncture in AA rats. And the effect of moxibustion + electroacupuncture group is better than that of moxibustion group or electroacupuncture group only.Conclusion: Moxibustion and electroacupuncture may increase significantly 3 -Ep content in blood plasma and inflammatory tissueto play a role in the analgetic effect and immunoregulation in AA rat. Acupuncture not only can activate immune cells of inflammatory tissue to release -Ep but also can promote 3 -Ep of blood to incline to tissue around inflammation. At the same time, the results of our experiment showed that acupuncture has a favorable effect .on rheumatoid arthritis by applying reasonable acupoints. It was indicated that "shenque" acupoint should be used as a immunodulating and effective acupoint in clinical therapy of rheumatoid arthritis. |
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