Electroacupuncture in the repair of spinal cord injury：inhibiting the Notch signaling pathway and promoting neural stem cell proliferation

摘要

Electroacupuncture for the treatment of spinal cord injury has a good clinical curative effect, but the underlying mechanism is unclear. In our experiments, the spinal cord of adult Sprague-Daw-ley rats was clamped for 60 seconds.Dazhui (GV14) andMingmen (GV4) acupoints of rats were subjected to electroacupuncture. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay revealed that the expres-sion of serum inlfammatory factors was apparently downregulated in rat models of spinal cord injury after electroacupuncture. Hematoxylin-eosin staining and immunohistochemistry results demonstrated that electroacupuncture contributed to the proliferation of neural stem cells in rat injured spinal cord, and suppressed their differentiation into astrocytes. Real-time quantitative PCR and western blot assays showed that electroacupuncture inhibited activation of the Notch signaling pathway induced by spinal cord injury. These ifndings indicate that electroacupuncture repaired the injured spinal cord by suppressing the Notch signaling pathway and promoting the proliferation of endogenous neural stem cells.