Skeletal muscle after fine needle stimulation. Rattus norvegicus

Fine needle stimulation also known as acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medical practice which causes relief of pain. We demonstrated that it caused neovascularization and enhanced recovery of blood perfusion in a ischemic portion of skeletal muscle in rats with hindlimb ischemia. Therefore we evaluated the effect of fine needle stimulation on skeletal muscle at gene expression level Keywords: Evaluation of physical stimulation Overall design: With 0.14mm diameter stainless steel needle, a hundred pricks were applied in a 100 square mili-meter region on addductor portion of the left rat hindlimb. Right hindlimb was left intact as control. 24 hrs after fine needle stimulation, skeletal muscle sample was resected from adductor muscle of fine needle stimulated left hindlimb and non-stimulated right hindlimbs, respectively. Then gene expression analysis with microarray was conducted on each skelatal muscle sample.

细针刺激（fine needle stimulation）又称针灸（acupuncture），是一种可缓解疼痛的传统中医疗法。本研究证实，该疗法可诱导后肢缺血（hindlimb ischemia）模型大鼠骨骼肌缺血区域发生血管新生（neovascularization），并提升其血液灌注（blood perfusion）的恢复水平。为此，我们从基因表达层面探究细针刺激对骨骼肌的调控效应。
关键词：物理刺激效果评估
实验设计：使用直径0.14mm的不锈钢针，在大鼠左侧后肢内收肌区域的100平方毫米范围内实施百次针刺刺激；右侧后肢不予任何处理，作为空白对照。细针刺激24小时后，分别从接受刺激的左侧后肢内收肌与未刺激的右侧后肢内收肌采集骨骼肌样本。随后对所有骨骼肌样本开展基因芯片（microarray）表达分析。