Electro-acupuncture improves epileptic seizures induced by kainic acid in taurine-depletion rats.

Electro-acupuncture improves epileptic seizures induced by kainic acid in taurine-depletion rats. Acupunct Electrother Res. 2005;30(3-4):207-17 Authors: Jin HB, Li B, Gu J, Cheng JS, Yang R Abstract Electro-acupuncture (EA) partially inhibited epilepsy with great success. The biological basis underlying EA anti-convulsion remained uncertain, which resulted in limited application and slow improvement of acupuncture. Our previous study indicated that taurine may play an inhibitory role against epilepsy as an inhibitory amino acid in the central nervous system and EA may inhibit epilepsy via up-regulating the expression of taurine transporter to increase the release of taurine. Involvement of taurine in kainic acid (KA)-induced epilepsy and anti-convulsion of EA was further addressed on taurine deficiency animal in the present work. We instituted endogenous taurine-deficiency model by supplementation of beta-alanine (3%) in drinking water for continuous 10 days initially, injected KA into lateral cerebral ventricle to induce epileptic seizure, and performed EA treatment on DU26 "RenZhong" and K "YongQuan" acupoints by an EA apparatus (Model G6805-2) using successive waves with the frequency 64Hz and the current intensity 0.8-1.0 mA for 30 minutes in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Taurine levels markedly decreased in cortex, hippocampus, striatum and cerebellum of rats after beta-alanine administration by fluore-HPLC measurement. EA alleviate...
Source: Acupuncture and Electro-Therapeutics Research - Category: Complementary Medicine Tags: Acupunct Electrother Res Source Type: research