Transcript Profiling of Spinal Dorsal Horn in Response to Electroacupuncture on Rats at 24h

The electroacupuncture-induced analgesic effect has been used widely to alleviate diverse pains. However, significant individual variations in analgesic effect of EA for both experiments and clinics were reported. According to the sensitivity of the analgesic response to EA stimulation, the subjects could be categorized into high responders (HR) and low responders (LR). However, the molecular mechanism of individual variability in the analgesic response to acupuncture stimulation is still uncertain. This study aims to investigate the potential gene expression in spinal dorsal horn induced by 2Hz/100Hz electroacupuncture in HR and LR rats. Rats were given 2Hz or 100Hz electroacupuncture for 30 min and using cDNA microarrays to compare different gene expression in dorsal horn after 2Hz/100Hz electoacupunture stimulation. Transcriptome profiling analysis found that different regulation of gene expression after 2Hz/100Hz electroacupuncture in HR and LR rats at 24 hr time point. Keywords: Transcriptome analysis Rats were exposed to different frequencies (2Hz or 100Hz) electroacupuncture stimlation for 30 min and nociceptive testing and returned to home cages for 24 hours before sacrificed. According to the sensitivity of the analgesic response to 2Hz or 100Hz EA stimulation, the rats divided into four groups: 2Hz-HR group, 2Hz-LR group, 100Hz-HR group and 100Hz-LR group. Subsequently analyzed their dorsal horn transcript profile using cDNA microarrays, the rats were without receiving electroacupuncture as control. The tissue of dorsal horn (DH) of the fifth and sixth lumbar (L5 and L6) of four or five rats were selected for transcript analysis in each group. The five control rats were mixed and labeled with cy5, each rat of experiment groups was labeled with cy3.