AsianScientist (Mar. 31, 2014) – Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese practice commonly used to relieve pain, nausea and stress, may also protect against deadly bacterial infections, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.
Severe sepsis is an overwhelming systemic inflammation that causes lethal multiple organ failure and can develop in several clinical situations including bacterial infection, trauma and cancer. Although sepsis is the leading cause of death in intensive care units, there are no drug treatments currently available.
Rather than using drugs, activation of the nervous system could protect against septic shock. Studies in mice have shown that electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve triggers a complex series of signals that dampen the production of inflammatory proteins by immune cells in the spleen. However, this approach requires surgical exposure of the nerve and is thus not feasible in critically ill patients.
Luis Ulloa and colleagues at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School have shown that electroacupuncture provides an alternative way to activate this critical nerve in mice. By transmitting short electrical pulses through acupuncture needles placed just below the knee, they were able to stimulate the vagus nerve and rescued mice from lethal sepsis.
The researchers found that vagus nerve stimulation caused the adrenal gland to release dopamine, which then inhibited inflammatory protein production by immune cells in the blood. Treating mice with agents that stimulate dopamine receptors mimicked the protective effect of electroacupuncture in septic mice, including those with impaired adrenal function. This is good news given that poor adrenal function often goes hand in hand with clinical sepsis.
Although electroacupuncture may have limitations in clinical sepsis, these studies may help researchers understand the pros and cons of electroacupuncture in certain patient populations and to develop urgently needed new strategies for treating sepsis.
The article can be found at: Torres-Rosas et al. (2014) Dopamine mediates vagal modulation of the immune system by electroacupuncture.
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Source: Rutgers New Jersey Medical School; Photo: Thunderchild7/Flickr/CC.
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