Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Dec 26, 2020; 12(12): 1576-1590
Published online Dec 26, 2020. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v12.i12.1576
Acupuncture accelerates neural regeneration and synaptophysin production after neural stem cells transplantation in mice
Lan Zhao, Jian-Wei Liu, Bo-Hong Kan, Hui-Yan Shi, Lin-Po Yang, Xin-Yu Liu
Lan Zhao, Bo-Hong Kan, Hui-Yan Shi, Lin-Po Yang, Xin-Yu Liu, First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin 300381, China
Lan Zhao, Bo-Hong Kan, Hui-Yan Shi, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Tianjin 300381, China
Lan Zhao, Bo-Hong Kan, Hui-Yan Shi, National Clinical Research Center for Chinese Medicine Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Tianjin 300381, China
Jian-Wei Liu, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin 300193, China
Author contributions: Zhao L was responsible for the study design and research funding, and wrote the manuscript; Zhao L and Liu J performed the neural stem cell transplantation; Shi HY was responsible for acupuncture; Kan BH and Yang LP were involved in the data collection; Liu XY and Kan BH performed statistical analysis and some of the experiments; all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81202740; and Tianjin Natural Science Fund, No. 17JCYBJC26200.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (approval number: TCM-LAEC2019036).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at lanzhao69@163.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE Guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE Guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lan Zhao, PhD, Research Fellow, First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Acupuncture and Moxibustion; National Clinical Research Center for Chinese Medicine Acupuncture and Moxibustion, No. 88 Changling Road, Xiqing District, Tianjin 300381, China. lanzhao69@163.com
Received: February 27, 2020
Peer-review started: February 27, 2020
First decision: September 11, 2020
Revised: September 23, 2020
Accepted: October 13, 2020
Article in press: October 13, 2020
Published online: December 26, 2020
Processing time: 304 Days and 3 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic, progressive, age-related degenerative disease of the central nervous system, which seriously affects the quality of life of the elderly. Synaptic changes are closely related to cognitive impairment of AD. The effects of acupuncture on cognitive impairment may be related to the regulation of the neural stem cell (NSC) microenvironment.

Research motivation

Previous studies have shown that the improvement of senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) cognitive impairment by acupuncture is related to the regulation of NSCs microenvironment. This study aimed to observe the effects of acupuncture on nerve regeneration and synapse after regulating the microenvironment of NSCs, and further explore the anti-dementia mechanism of acupuncture.

Research objectives

To observe the mechanism of acupuncture promoting nerve regeneration and synaptophysin expression in dementia mice after NSC transplantation.

Research methods

Senescence-accelerated mice (SAM) were divided into six groups: SAMR1 (RC), SAMP8 (PC), sham transplantation (PS), NSC transplantation (PT), NSC transplantation with acupuncture (PTA), and NSC transplantation with non-acupoint acupuncture (PTN). The behavior changes of mice after NSC transplantation were observed by the Morris water maze test. The histological changes of the hippocampus, NSC proliferation, as well as synaptophysin production in the hippocampal microenvironment were studied by hematoxylin-eosin staining, immunofluorescence staining, and flow cytometry.

Research results

Escape latency of all the NSC transplantation groups increased obviously. The behavioral change in the PTA group was stronger than those of the other two groups (P < 0.05). After acupuncture, the hippocampal structure in the PTA group was clear, the cell arrangement was orderly, and the necrosis of cells in CA1 and CA3 areas was significantly reduced. The number of BrdU-positive proliferating cells increased significantly in the PTA group compared to those in the PT and PTN groups (P < 0.05). The synaptophysin expression in the PC group decreased in comparison to the RC group, that in PT, PTA, and PTN groups increased as compared to the PC group, and that in the PTA group increased significantly as compared to the PTN group with acupoint-related specificity (P < 0.05).

Research conclusions

Acupuncture accelerates nerve regeneration and synaptophysin production in SAMP8 mice by regulating the hippocampal microenvironment after NSCs transplantation.

Research perspectives

These findings provide an experimental basis for the treatment of nerve regeneration in AD.