PREEMPTIVE ANALGESIA WITH ACUPUNCTURE SEEN IN THE c-FOS EXPRESSION IN RATS

摘要

The behavior and the pain awareness experience are characterized by alert and anxiety and disappear as soon as the cure process starts. Based on this idea, the present study aimed to quantify the c-fos expression in spinal marrow segments, at sacrum-lumbar level in rats, after a surgery stimulus (algesia), using sodium thiopental anesthesia and acupunctural practices pre and post-operative. Thirty-six similar animals were used, after an experimental trial with 6 rats. The animals were stimulated withintraperitoneal injections of saline solution (NaCl) 0.2% (2ml), and were divided into two groups, pre and post-operative. Each of them was subjected to the treatments: Control (CL), Manual Acupuncture (MA) and Electro Acupuncture (EA). The animals wererandomly distributed into pre and post-operative groups with 18 animals each and then, redistributed in 6 animals for each treatment group. The c-fos expressions were quantified using immune-histochemistry for all situations. The collected data were analyzed by using the T-test, at 5% probability, in order to check differences between groups, treatments and inside each group. After the surgery, the c-fos expression was similar in all treatments when compared to the pre-surgery phase. The animals, underpre-surgery condition, showed c-fos expression higher than that in the post-surgery control treatments, contradicting the principles observed in acupuncture applications and preemptive analgesia. The MA and EA treatments showed similar values for c-fosexpression in both phases, and they were not effective as an analgesic practice. Finally, it is conclude that acupuncture practice used as preemptive analgesia in rats must be studied again, using different application points, and different measurement technique of c-fos expression and/or use the brain laminas to measure the c-fos expression, as it has been done in most of the recent papers.