Research Progress of Different Acupuncture and Moxibustion Methods in the Treatment of GERD (Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease)

Over the past decade, there have been many clinical reports on acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of gastro esophageal reflux disease, which has been an increasing trend year by year. The authors use "acupuncture", "acupuncture and moxibustion" or "electric acupuncture" and "GERD" or "gastro esophageal reflux disease" as key words for retrieval. Through the clinical articles on acupuncture and moxibustion methods in the treatment of GERD indexed by China CNKI academic literature database, VPCS database and Wanfang database from 2006 to 2016, we find that: acupuncture and moxibustion methods in the treatment of GERD has definite curative effect and outstanding advantages. It can better improve the symptoms of patients and can effectively improve their quality of life. At present, in clinical applications, there are treatment ideas such as the method of acupuncture on governor vessel back segment, the old ten needles, and compatibility of five meridians in the aspect of acupoint selection; there are treatment ideas such as fire acupuncture, thread-embedding, and electric acupuncture in the aspect of method of needling and moxibustion; there are treatment ideas such as acupuncture and moxibustion combined with pinellia ternate Xiexin Decoction, Chinese herb bath, deanxit (flupentixol and melitracen tablets) in the aspect of acupuncture and medicinal treatment. This paper comb integration of the current variety of therapies, in order to allow readers to obtain a more comprehensive clinical diagnosis and treatment ideas of gastro esophageal reflux disease.

The Effect of Electroacupuncture versus Manual Acupuncture through the Expression of TrkB/NF-κB in the Subgranular Zone of the Dentate Gyrus of Telomerase-Deficient Mice

Our previous study showed that the acupuncture stimulation on the acupoint (ST-36) could activate the brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) signaling pathways in telomerase-deficient mice. Recently, we set out to investigate whether the manual acupuncture (MA) or electroacupuncture (EA) displays a therapeutic advantage on age-related deterioration of learning and memory. Both telomerase-deficient mice (Terc−/− group, n=24) and wild-type mice (WT group, n=24) were randomly assigned to 3 subgroups (CON, controls with no treatment; MA, mice receiving manual acupuncture; EA, mice receiving electric acupuncture). The mice were subjected to behavior test, and EA/MA were applied at bilateral acupoints (ST36) 30 min daily for 7 successive days. The brain tissues were collected after the last Morris water maze (MWM) test and were subjected to the immunohistochemistry and western blot analysis. The MWM test showed that EA can significantly increase the time in target quadrant (P≤0.01) and frequency of locating platform for Terc−/− mice (P≤0.05), while nothing changed in WT mice. Furthermore, western blotting and immunohistochemistry suggested that EA could also specifically increase the expression of TrkB and NF-κB in Terc−/− mice but not in wild-type mice (P≤0.05). Meanwhile, the expression level and ratio of ERK/p-ERK did not exhibit significant changes in each subgroup. These results indicated that, compared with MA, the application of EA could specifically ameliorate the spatial learning and memory capability for telomerase-deficient mice through the activation of TrkB and NF-κB.