[Involvement of Central Neuroglia Cells in Analgesic Effect of Electroacupuncture Therapy for Neuropathic Pain].

Neuropathic pain is one of the common chronic syndromes in clinical practice. It has been demonstrated that the chronic neuropathic pain and glial cells in the central nervous system are closely related to each other. When inducing analgesic effect in neuropathic pain, EA suppressed OX-42 labeled activation of microgliacytes in dorsal horns of the spinal cord, down-regulated release of nitric oxide (NO), expression of P 2 X4 receptor, intracellular mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), extracellular regulated protein kinases (ERK), proinflammatory cytokines IL-1 ß, IL-6, TNF-α, interferon (IF)-γ and up-regulated neurotrophin-3 expression in neuropathic pain rats. In regard to spinal astrocytes, acupuncture suppressed peripheral nerve injury induced activation of GFAP-labeled astrocytes, down-regulated the expression levels of macrophage inflammatory proteins (MIP)-1, MIP-1 ß, MIP-3 α, TNF-α mRNA and IL-1 ß mRNA, etc. in the dorsal horns of the spinal cord. Up to now, the underlying me-chanisms of acupuncture in regulating activities of glia cells, and interaction between neurons and glia cells, and the related pathways in the peripheral and central systems remain unclear. The effects of some related protein and gene expressions involving in acupuncture analgesia need being confirmed by adopting different approaches.