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Published online: 22
January 2007; | doi:10.1038news070122-1/
Acupuncture may show effect in treating
Parkinson'sMice, at least, could benefit
from therapeutic use of needles.
Kerri Smith
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Studies in mice could shed light
on whether acupuncture works in humans, some
say. Punchstock
| | Acupuncture, used for thousands of
years in the Far East to treat pain and illness, has many
followers but little scientific rigor to explain whether it
works or not. Now, an unusual study suggests that acupuncture
has a marked effect on the type of brain inflammation seen in
Parkinson's disease — in mice, that is.
Studies
of the effects of acupuncture in animals are few and far
between. But mice can't tell whether they are being treated or
not — potentially yielding a much better idea of whether the
treatment might actually be working or whether any improvement
is just a placebo effect.
Parkinson's is a
movement disorder that affects more than 6 million people
worldwide. It is associated with low levels of the chemical
dopamine in the brain. To investigate the protective effects
of acupuncture in the brain, a team led by Sabina Lim at Kyung
Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, used a standard mouse
model of Parkinson's disease, in which injections of a
chemical known as MPTP kill off brain cells that manufacture
dopamine.
Balanced out
Some of
the injected mice then received acupuncture every two days in
two spots, one behind the knee and one on top of the foot. In
humans, says Lim, these points are traditionally considered to
be involved in muscle movement, and thus could potentially be
seen as targets for treatment of Parkinson's. Another group of
mice received acupuncture in two spots on the hips, not
believed to be effective for acupuncture. A third group had no
acupuncture at all.
 It is difficult to say that it
can 'cure' the disease.  |
Sabina Lim
Kyung Hee
University | | |
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| By the end of seven days, the MPTP injections had
decreased dopamine levels both in the mice that had not had
acupuncture, and in the mice that received 'pretend'
acupuncture, to about half the normal amount. But in the
acupuncture-treated group, dopamine levels declined much less
steeply, and nearly 80% of the dopamine remained.
The
mechanism for such an effect is still unknown, Lim says. But
she and her team suspect that because inflammation in the
brain often accompanies and worsens other symptoms of
Parkinson's disease, acupuncture might maintain dopamine
levels by preventing inflammation. Their results are published
in Brain Research1.
Iris
Chen, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston who researches the effects of acupuncture on the
dopamine system, agrees that acupuncture might even out a
skewed balance of chemicals in the brain. The treatment can
increase or decrease the levels of brain chemicals, she says,
and seems to be able to restore the correct balance if things
go awry. "That's probably why acupuncture doesn't have much
effect if you're healthy," says her colleague Kenneth Kwong.
East meets West
Lim's team has
already performed a clinical trial of acupuncture in humans
with Parkinson's disease, but the sample size was not large
enough to verify that there was a definite effect. They did
conclude, though, that a combination of Western medication and
acupuncture could extend the length of time the drugs work for
(with time, they become less effective) and increase the
survival rate of Parkinson's patients. "The bottom line," Lim
says, "is that, even though Parkinson's patients are treated
with acupuncture therapies in Korea, it is difficult to say
that it can 'cure' the disease."
Using acupuncture to
treat Parkinson's would also mean diagnosing the disease early
enough, says Ruth Walker, a movement disorders researcher at
the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
"Parkinson's doesn't even manifest until you have lost a large
proportion of dopamine cells," she says. By that point, people
need a replacement of the dopamine they have lost; maintenance
of the existing levels is often not enough.
On the
whole, though, Walker is positive about the study. It's
important that work such as Lim's make it into Western
literature, she says, in order to encourage scientifically
rigorous work into acupuncture and other alternative
therapies.
Visit our newsblog to read and post comments about
this story.
References
- Kang J.M., et
al. Brain Res.,
1131. 211 - 219
(2007).
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Story from
news@nature.com:
http://news.nature.com//news/2007/070122/070122-1.html | |
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