Studies On The Regulatory Effects Of Gua Sha To The Skin Immune System

Gua Sha is widely employed to treat various diseases in Chinese clinic.As the mutual communication becomes more and more intensified,Gua Sha is gradually learned and accepted by western countries.However the scientific theory on the mechanism of Gua Sha’s therapeutic effect is not yet clear.Based on the previous studies, we proposed the hypothesis that Gua Sha’s therapeutic effect is partially induced by its regulation to the skin immune system. Evidences are provided through experiments on tissue morphology, cytokine secretion and the immune responses against antigen delivered into the skin.Our results from Masson’s staining demonstrate that Gua Sha treatment can lead to capillary blood vessel dilation and rupture, therefore a low-grade damage of the subcutaneous tissue. We scrape the mouse skin 20 times or 40 times,and the concentrations of TNF-α、IL-6、IL-12、IL-23 in the treated skin area were found up-regulated, while IL-10 down-regulated. Therefore Gua Sha could lead to mild local inflammatory reaction. The more time we scrape the mouse skin, the higher-grade the inflammation is. The level of TNF-a increase also in the untreated skin area of the same mouse, which reveals that systemic reaction is provoked as well. Blood samples were taken 0.5h and 1h after 40 times skin scrape and increased levels of TNF-a and IL-6 were detected.This confirms that systemic reaction is provoked. When OVA is delivered on Gua Sha-treated skin, IgG titers are higher than those of the untreated,which indicates that Gua Sha treatment can sensitize the function of skin immune system.In summary, through vaccination studies, for the first time we proved that Gua Sha could improve the functionality of the skin and systemic immune system. This piece of work also provides useful insights into the mechanisms of Gua Sha’s therapeutic effect and guarantees further investigation.