Effect of herbal cake-separated moxibustion on behavioral stress reactions and blood lactic acid level and muscular AMPK/PGC-1α signaling.. 2022 Xu

Full title: Effect of herbal cake-separated moxibustion on behavioral stress reactions and blood lactic acid level and muscular AMPK/PGC-1α signaling in rats with CFS

Objective: To observe the effect of herbal cake-separated moxibustion (HCSM) on serum lactic acid (BLA) level and AMPK/PGC-1α signaling pathway in the quadriceps femoris in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) rats, so as to explore its mechanisms underlying improvement of CFS.

Methods: According to the random number table, 50 SD rats were divided into blank control, model, HCSM, sham HCSM and medication (herbal medicine gavage) groups, with 10 rats in each group. The CFS model was established by using chronic restraint and exhaustive swimming, alternately, once daily for 21 days. The herbal cake was made of Xiaoyao Powder (Mental Ease Powder, composed of [Danggui (Radix Angelicae Sinensis), Baishao (Radix Paeoniae Alba), Chaihu (Radix Bupleuri), Fuling (Poria), Baizhu (Rhizoma Atractylodis, Macrocephalae), etc.]. The HCSM was applied to "Shenque" (CV8), "Guanyuan "(CV4), bilateral "Zusanli" (ST36) and "Qimen" (LR14), 5 moxa-cones for each acupoint, once daily for 10 days. For sham HCSM, the excipient was instead of herbal cake, and the same 5 moxa-cones was given as the HCSM group. Rats of the medication group received gavage of Xiaoyao Powder suspension (60 mg·kg-1), once daily for 10 days. The open field test and tail suspension test were conducted for determining the animals' locomotor activity. The blood sample was taken from the abdominal aorta under anesthesia for assaying the levels of serum BLA, chemokine ligand CXCL9 and β-endorphin (EP) by ELISA. Bilateral quadriceps femoris were sampled for observing histopathological changes after staining with conventional H.E. technique, and for detecting the expression levels of phosphorylated AMP-activated protein kinase (p-AMPK) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) by using immunohistochemistry.

Results: Compared with the blank control group, the number of rearing and horizontal grid-crossing times, struggling times of tail suspension test were significantly decreased (P<0.05), and the immobility time was obviously prolonged (P<0.05) in the model group. Compared with the model group, both HCSM and medication groups had a significant increase of rearing, horizontal grid-crossing times and struggling times (P<0.05), and the immobility time had a significant decrease (P<0.05). But there were no significant differences in the total movement distance among the 5 groups (P>0.05), and in the 5 indexes of behavioral measurements between the HCSM and medication groups (P>0.05). The sham HCSM could also evidently increase the struggling times and reduce the immobility time (P<0.05). The contents of serum BLA, CXCL9 and β-EP were obviously higher in the model group than in the blank control group (P<0.05), as well as remarkably lower in the HCSM and medication groups than in the model group (P<0.05). Whereas the expression levels of muscular p-AMPK and PGC-1α were considerably lower in the model group than in the blank control group (P<0.05), and significantly increased in both HCSM and medication groups relevant to the model group (P<0.05). Compared with the sham HCSM group, the contents of BLA, CXCL9 and β-EP in serum of the HCSM group and contents of CXCL9, β-EP in medication group were significantly decreased (P<0.05), and the protein expressions of p-AMPK and PGC-1α in quadriceps femoris in both HCSM and medication groups were significantly increased (P<0.05). H.E. staining showed smaller intercellular space, uneven cytoplasmic staining in some muscle fibers, nucleus pyknosis and condensation, and inflammatory cell infiltration in the model group, which was milder in both HCSM and medication groups.

Conclusion: HCSM can mitigate the stress behavioral state in CFS rats, which may be related with its functions in lowering the levels of serum BLA, CXCL9 and β-EP, and activating AMPK/PGC-1α signaling pathway (balancing energy metabolism) in the quadriceps femoris.

PubMed abstract, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36301164/

 

King Alfred would have died laughing.

 

again with the stupid & ignorant notion that ME/CFS is about having exercise to exhaustion. I do wish researchers would bother to find out what the condition IS before they subject animals to cruelty.

They cannot possibly know that any of these animals had CFS, you cant give anyone or anything CFS by tiring them out!

Not even bothered to look at the rest of it. What a waste of money and suffering

 

Depressing all around. They wasted a bunch of money, and traumatized a bunch of poor rats to write a junk science paper about quack medicine. (I'm not against animal research in general but this was for nothing)

 

Good to know…!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3789413/

 

Being separated from cake is never a good thing.

I've actually tried moxibustion, a friend who is an acupuncturist gave me some. It made my whole house smell of weed.

 

This is so flawed.

Firstly the premise that making rats swim for 21 days is a CFS model is false, presuming a priori that CFS equals stress and fatigue, which is not justified by any data derived from comparing the two situations in humans.

Secondly the interpretation of struggle time in tail suspended rodents is a deeply flawed metric subject to misinterpretation.

Its use in the study of antidepressants indicates the demotivating effects of lithium for example which does not mean they are less depressed, it means they lose the will to fight, which is indicative of the nature of the psychological interventions described as antidepressants which are essentially behavioural supressants, like lithium and tricyclics, which may be how they come to be subjectively reported as extinguishing the pain and anguish associated with depression.

A treatment which creates behavioural stimulation in an exhausted rat cannot be compared to CFS as we do not know that CFS is due to exhaustion or results in a state equivalent to the exhaustion induced by 21 days of tethered swimming. ME is widely regarded as having an immunological aspect to its etiology so is an entirely different phenomenon. So this so called "experiment" is an utterly useless protocol wrt CFS ME research.

I feel very sorry for the rats, the way they are treated and their lives lead at the mercy or otherwise of deeply ignorant experimentors who lack experimental insight and compassion and do these things based on the pursuit of a career in a cultish pseudoacademic sect whose beliefs and activities are not rational. These sentient creatures are tortured because of this ignorance and their suffering does not alleviate it because experiments like this contribute nothing of value to science. They are just a waste of resources, pointlessly cruel, morally indefensible and a dismal stain on the reputation of science.

... imho

 

Even worse, there is cake in the title, but no rat seems to have been given any cake - hardly surprising that they behave as if depressed.

 

Do the rats fill in questionnaires?

 

This garbage is the future of medicine. Or at least the future of the parts of medicine that don't work, which is way, way, too many parts.

As if the merger of pseudoscience and scientific medicine would ever work out.

 

Even Mao didn't use Chinese traditional medicine because, he said, it didn't work.

 

The fact is they are mixing three treatments, heat treatment and molecular treatment, three if you count acupoint stimulation. Yet they have acupoint, heat and molecular by vapour in one group, acupoint and heat in another and molecular by gavage in another, so they cannot distinguish acupoint from heat effects.

What puzzles me is how do they think they know where acupoints are on a rat?

With humans you can communicate verbally and feasibly verify a common subjective perception of tenderness or meditative character, which is utterly subjective and totally unscientific due to the strong influence of suggestion but how are they going to work that out with a rodent without assuming they know what meridians are, even though these do not correspond with physical structures in humans?

Intuition? The rodent family diverged from other mammals 60 million years ago. This really is looney tunes.

At best it shows is that heat treatment helps physically exhausted rats recover (both sham and HSCM) and heated herbal vapours can convey molecules, which I think we already knew.

And the poor rats suffered and died for this?

 

Guys. You got it all wrong. Cake is good for us PWME... Eat cake, get better

 

This is so weird I was wondering whether this has anything to do with the cult of Falun Gong.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SyurgZ8GaQ

Research on ME and Shatner’s Bassoon needs better funding.