Autism Spectrum Disorder and Electroacupuncture and the Vagus Nerve
Kristen Sparrow • November 02, 2025
This 2025 study explored how electroacupuncture (EA) improves autism-like behaviors in mice by acting through the gut-brain axis and vagus nerve. Using a valproic acid–induced autism model, researchers found that EA significantly improved social and behavioral symptoms while reducing brain inflammation and microglial activation. Transplanting gut microbiota from EA-treated mice to untreated mice reproduced these benefits, while the reverse eliminated them—demonstrating that the gut microbiome mediates acupuncture’s effects. When the vagus nerve was severed, the improvements disappeared, confirming that intact vagal signaling is essential. The findings reveal EA’s potential to treat neurodevelopmental disorders by modulating microbiota–vagus–brain communication.
Please see full abstract below. Autism blog post here and here.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by behavioral and neurological abnormalities. Numerous pieces of evidence indicate a strong association between ASD and neuroinflammation mediated by gut microbiota and microglial activation. Previous studies have shown that the therapeutic effects of an acupuncture protocol targeting the bacteria-gut-brain axis in a well-established ASD mouse model induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA). We demonstrated that electroacupuncture significantly alleviates behavioral symptoms in VPA model. However, the precise mechanisms remain insufficiently elucidated. In this study, we confirmed that electroacupuncture markedly improved behavioral symptoms in ASD mice. We conducted gut microbiota transplantation from electroacupuncture-treated mice to untreated ASD mice, improving behavioral outcomes in untreated ASD mice. Conversely, by transplanting gut microbiota from ASD mice into electroacupuncture-treated mice, we successfully mitigated the beneficial behavioral effects of acupuncture. We analyzed inflammatory markers in the microglial activation from cerebral cortex and hippocampus tissues, revealing that acupuncture exerts robust anti-neuroinflammatory effects in ASD mice. To further validate the mechanism, we performed vagotomy in ASD mice, which abolished the therapeutic benefits of acupuncture. Our findings establish that the behavioral improvements observed in ASD mice are intricately linked to the diversity and abundance of gut microbiota. Furthermore, regulatory effects of electroacupuncture on ASD behaviors are mediated via bacteria-gut-brain axis, dependent on intact vagus nerve signaling. This study provides compelling evidence for the potential of acupuncture to modulate central neuroinflammation through vagus nerve-mediated gut microbiota regulation, offering novel avenue into its therapeutic application for neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD.
