title: Study of the effects of electroacupuncture in a rodent model of cerebral ischaemia.
abstract: The effects of electroacupuncture (EA) has been studied in a model of global cerebral ischaemia performed in gerbils through the bilateral carotid artery occlusion (BCAO). Animals, under isofluorane anaesthesia, underwent 5 min of BCAO and were killed after 7 days. The effects of EA were evaluated both on functional (with electrophysiological recordings of synaptic potentials in hippocampal slices) and morphological parameters (by counting the number of survived neurons in CA1 area of the hippocampus). The results demonstrated that the treatment of animals with EA (5 min before, during and 20 min after BCAO and 30 min per day in the following 5 days) did not modify either the ischaemia-induced reduction of synaptic potentials amplitude, either ischaemia-induced neuronal loss in the hippocampus. We conclude that, at least in this animal model of cerebral ischaemia, EA does not exert a neuroprotective effect.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio di Farmacologia, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy. domenici@iss.it
authors.forename: Rosaria Maria
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Domenici
authors.forename: Luo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mingfu
authors.forename: Maria Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Tebano
authors.forename: Rosaria
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Reggio
authors.forename: Flavia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chiarotti
authors.forename: Filomena
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Petti
authors.forename: Aldo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Liguori
authors.forename: Patrizia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Popoli
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000628:therapy*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D015671:Electroacupuncture; D005849:Gerbillinae