Acupuncture promotes mTOR-independent autophagic clearance of aggregation-prone proteins in mouse brain

Ancient Medicine Made Modern: Clinical Stories

This study is a bit complicated. They look at acupuncture at GB 34 and its effect on autophagy, dopamine and motor function in a mouse model of Parkinson’s condition. Though acupuncture increases autophagy of α-synuclein romoted the autophagic clearance of α-synuclein (α-syn), a well known aggregation-prone protein closely related to Parkinson’s disease (PD), in the substantia nigra par compacta (SNpc) of the brain in a PD mouse model, they found that protein clearance arose from the activation of the autophagy-lysosome pathway (ALP) in a mammalian target that was NOT mTOR, or mammalian Target Of Rapamycin. This is of interest since rapamycin has plenty of side effects that a way around it would be to use acupuncture instead.

This article is from 2016 and I haven’t heard more about it, so I hope this will be reproduced.

. 2016; 6: 19714.

Published online 2016 Jan 21. doi: 10.1038/srep19714

PMCID: PMC4726430

PMID: 26792101

Acupuncture promotes mTOR-independent autophagic clearance of aggregation-prone proteins in mouse brain

Tian Tian,^1,^* Yanhong Sun,^1,^* Huangan Wu,² Jian Pei,³ Jing Zhang,⁴ Yi Zhang,¹ Lu Wang,¹ Bin Li,¹ Lihua Wang,¹ Jiye Shi,^5,⁶ Jun Hu,¹ and Chunhai Fan^a,¹

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Abstract

Acupuncture has historically been practiced to treat medical disorders by mechanically stimulating specific acupoints with fine needles. Despite its well-documented efficacy, its biological basis remains largely elusive. In this study, we found that mechanical stimulation at the acupoint of Yanglingquan (GB34) promoted the autophagic clearance of α-synuclein (α-syn), a well known aggregation-prone protein closely related to Parkinson’s disease (PD), in the substantia nigra par compacta (SNpc) of the brain in a PD mouse model. We found the protein clearance arose from the activation of the autophagy-lysosome pathway (ALP) in a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)-independent approach. Further, we observed the recovery in the activity of dopaminergic neurons in SNpc, and improvement in the motor function at the behavior level of PD mice. Whereas acupuncture and rapamycin, a chemical mTOR inhibitor, show comparable α-syn clearance and therapeutic effects in the PD mouse model, the latter adopts a distinctly different, mTOR-dependent, autophagy induction process. Due to this fundamental difference, acupuncture may circumvent adverse effects of the rapamycin treatment. The newly discovered connection between acupuncture and autophagy not only provides a new route to understanding the molecular mechanism of acupuncture but also sheds new light on cost-effective and safe therapy of neurodegenerative diseases.