| Depression is a very serious psychosis disorder around the world nowadays. With the development of the society and the alternation of the disease,its affect to people's health becomes distinct day by day. According to the report of WHO in 2001, the amount quantity of injury caused by depression possessed the first place among all kinds of diseases, and the financial burden caused by disease due to depression took the fourth place globally. The quota index was expected to jump to the second rank place in 2020. As a result, it becomes urgent for medical and scientific workers experts to search for effective treatment, and clarify its function mechanism. Acupuncture is a very important part in the traditional Chinese medicine. This therapy can, to some extent, alleviate the symptoms of patients suffered depression, with its advantage of easy practicing, and without side-effects, though the mechanism of its effect remains unclear. The pathologic mechanism of depression has not been completely revealed scientifically. The monoamine neurotransmitter theory took the leading place in the past. With further research, experts in this area posed advanced several new theories, such as the theory of excitatory amino's toxin function to nerves and the theory of damage to the nutrition of cerebral nerves. Our research explores the possible mechanism of EA's curative effect in treating depression by taking chronic stress rat of depression as models. The results are as follows: 1. We employed 2Hz EA to stimulate acupoints like baihui, yintang, sanyinjiao, to treat chronic stress rat model of depression, and observe the variations of the sucrose intake, activity and weight of the rats. The result was that in the EA group the sucrose intake increased significantly, which almost reach that of the control group. The result had distinct difference compared with the model. And the activity and the weight in EA and model groups decreased greatly, which had significant difference compared with the control group, while that of EA and model groups went without notable difference. 2. On the basis of behaviour improvement, we started to study the possible neurological mechanism. We used HPLC-ECD technique to measure the content of excitatory amino (glutamic acid and aspartic acid) and inhibitory amino(alanine and glycin) in rat's cerebral cortex and hippocampus areas. We found that the level of glutamic acid,which had increased could be notably decreased with the stimulation of EA and that of aspartic acid and inhibitory amino hadn't any influence. 3. We used immunohistochemistry technique to observe the form of neurons in hippocampus CA3 area in 3 groups. We found that cone cells in that area in neat order and arrangement, the Nissl body deep dyeing. The cells of model rats were in loose order and cells vacant absent, the Nissl body shallow dyeing,even desolved. Cells in EA group were also in neat order while the quantity of cells somewhat decreased and Nissl body shallow dyeing. 4. We used immunohistochemistry technique to explore the change of the BDNF in the rat cortex. We found that there are minute BDNF and TrkB expression in control group, BDNF and TrkB level in model group increased greatly compared with control group, while BDNF and TrkB level in EA group increased greatly compared with control and model groups. Our research indicated that EA could increase the sucrose intake in chronic stress depression model and improve the state condition of absence of delight hedonia. The sitmulation of EA could also decrease the excitatory amino glutamic acid's toxin function to the neuron in hippocampus area, and increase the BDNF expression in cerebral cortex. The results indicated that EA might protect and nourish the injured neuron in hippocampus area and improve depression behaviour by ways of increasing the expression of BDNF, and inhibiting glutamic acid's toxin function to excitatory nerves. This may be one of the mechanisms that EA improves the neuroplasticity in the case of depression. In traditional Chinese medicine,... |
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