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Neurophysiological Mechanisms of Acupuncture Analgesia in Experimental Animal Models

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Scientific Bases of Acupuncture

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Abstract

Acupuncture and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) are two different procedures which result in analgesia by stimulation of peripheral tissues. Acupuncture, using either the traditional technique of manual rotation of needles [3, 35, 36, 62] or electroacupuncture [2, 3, 36], has been used successfully as an anesthetic [5, 32] and as a treatment for chronic pain [6,24,42,61]. TENS has been widely used in the West to produce analgesia clinically, as well as in experimental animal models [31, 44, 50, 56, 63, 73]. Like TENS, the effects of acupuncture appear to be due to the activation of peripheral nerve fibers [11, 22, 25, 43, 53, 59, 69]. Although acupuncture is effective in producing analgesia, the reported effectiveness varies greatly between studies. For example, in studies performed in the West alone, analgesia produced by acupuncture ranges from a mild effect to the one spectacular enough to allow performance of open heart surgery [32]. Not only the effectiveness but also the methodology of stimulation varies between laboratories. For example, frequency of stimulation for electroacupuncture ranges from several pulses per second [2, 26] to 10 KHz [43,48]. The lack of a standard method of application and the inconsistency of the effects between studies are primarily due to incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of acupuncture (and TENS) analgesia, which greatly hampers further development of the technique.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marine Biomedical Institute and Departments of Anatomy and Neuroscience and of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Texas Medical Branch, 200 University Boulevard, Galveston, Texas, 77550, USA

    Jin Mo Chung

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  1. Jin Mo Chung
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Physiology (Faculty of Medicine), Dept. of Zoology (Faculty of Arts and Science), University of Toronto, 25, Harbord St., Toronto, M5S1A1, Ontario, Canada

    Bruce Pomeranz M.D., Ph. D.

  2. Acupuncture Centrum, Goltsteinstrasse 26, D-4000, Düsseldorf, Federal Republic of Germany

    Gabriel Stux M.D.

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© 1989 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Chung, J.M. (1989). Neurophysiological Mechanisms of Acupuncture Analgesia in Experimental Animal Models. In: Pomeranz, B., Stux, G. (eds) Scientific Bases of Acupuncture. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73757-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73757-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-19335-7

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