title: Acupuncture regulates leukocyte subpopulations in human peripheral blood.
abstract: Acupuncture has recently been attracting more and more people throughout the world as an alternative treatment, however little is known about its physiological activities (i.e. immune system). We examined acupuncture both quantitatively and qualitatively by measuring CD-positive cell counts and cytokine expression levels in the blood, to determine the activity of T cells, B cells, macrophages and natural killer (NK) cells. Fifteen milliliters of peripheral blood obtained from 17 healthy volunteers aged 21-51 years, were analyzed using flow cytometry before and after acupuncture treatment. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of CD2(+), CD4(+), CD8(+), CD11b(+), CD16(+), CD19(+), CD56(+) cells as well as IL-4, IL-1beta and IFN-gamma levels in the cells after acupuncture stimulation of meridian points. These observations indicate that acupuncture may regulate the immune system and promote the activities of humoral and cellular immunity as well as NK cell activity. In this article, we discussed how acupuncture regulated leukocyte numbers and functions since they are considered to be potential indicators for evaluating complementary and alternative medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Fundamental Research for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Department of General Medicine, Kanazawa Medical University, Ishikawa Natural Medicinal Products Research Center, Kanazawa, Ishikawa and Department of Physiology, Meiji University of Oriental Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
authors.forename: Nobuo
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.forename: Masahiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sakuma
authors.forename: Toshiroh
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sugita
authors.forename: Kumiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Uchikawa
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sakaihara
authors.forename: Tsugiyasu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kanda
authors.forename: Matsuo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arai
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kawakita