Acupuncture for Inflammation

Can Acupuncture Reverse Killer Inflammation?

The ST36 Zusanli (足三里) acupuncture point is located just below the knee joint. This spot in mice—and it is hoped perhaps in humans—may be a critical entryway to gaining control over the often fatal inflammatory reactions that accompany systemic infections. Sepsis kills over 250,000 patients in the U.S. each year, more than 9 percent of overall deaths. Antibiotics can control sepsis-related infection, but no current drugs have FDA approval for counteracting the runaway immune response.

A research group at Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School, Newark, reported online in Nature Medicine on Feb. 23 that stimulating ST36 Zusanli with an electrical current passed through an acupuncture needle activated two nerve tracts in mice that led to the production of a biochemical that quieted a sepsis-like inflammatory reaction that had been induced in mice. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.)

The finding, which also involved the collaboration of the National Medical Center Siglo XXI, Mexico City and other institutions, raises the possibility that knowledge derived from alternative medicine may provide a means of discovering new nerve pathways that can regulate a variety of immune disorders from rheumatoid arthritis to Crohn’s disease. If future studies achieve similar results, acupuncture might be integrated into the nascent field of bioelectronics medicine—also called electroceuticals—that is generating intense interest among both academics and drug companies.

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