title: Preliminary study on pain reduction of monosodium iodoacetate-induced knee osteoarthritis in rats by carbon dioxide laser moxibustion.
abstract: In order to study the effects of CO2 laser moxibustion on the pain and inflammatory cytokine expression in the spinal dorsal horn of rats with monosodium iodoacetate- (MIA-) induced knee osteoarthritis (KOA), we designed an experiment by randomly assigning 8 SD rats into 3 groups, namely, a CO2 laser moxibustion group, a sham treatment group, and a blank control group. The treatment group received a laser moxibustion on acupoint Dubi (ST 35; 5 min/treatment, 1 treatment/day) for 8 days, and after treatment, the rats exhibited significantly increased interhindpaw differences compared with their preinduction values. Meanwhile, cytokine microarray analysis showed that one cytokine (TIMP-1) was significantly upregulated and two cytokines (Agrin and MMP-8) were significantly downregulated in treatment group. The present study suggested that CO2 laser moxibustion created certain pain reduction in the rats with MIA-induced KOA and significantly inhibited the expression of most inflammatory cytokines in the ipsilateral spinal dorsal horn.
authors.affiliation: Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, China.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Center for Integrative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
authors.forename: Ruixing
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, China.
authors.forename: Xueyong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: School of Chinese Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Lixing
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lao