Efficacy of femtosecond lasers for application of acupuncture therapy.
Author: Ohta M1,2, Hosokawa Y3, Hatano N4, Sugano A1,2, Ito A5, Takaoka Y6,7
Affiliation:
1Division of Medical Informatics and Bioinformatics, Kobe University Hospital, Kobe, 650-0017, Japan.
2Genome Science Research Unit, Life Science Research Center, Kobe Tokiwa University, Kobe, 653-0838, Japan.
3Graduate School of Materials Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, 630-0912, Japan.
4The Integrated Center for Mass Spectrometry, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, 650-0017, Japan.
5Department of Pathology, Kindai University Faculty of Medicine, Osaka, 589-8511, Japan.
6Division of Medical Informatics and Bioinformatics, Kobe University Hospital, Kobe, 650-0017, Japan. ytakaoka@med.kobe-u.ac.jp.
7Genome Science Research Unit, Life Science Research Center, Kobe Tokiwa University, Kobe, 653-0838, Japan. ytakaoka@med.kobe-u.ac.jp.
Conference/Journal: Lasers Med Sci.
Date published: 2016 Dec 10
Other:
Word Count: 221
Acupuncture treatment utilizes the stimulation of metal acupuncture needles that are manually inserted into a living body. In the last decades, laser light has been used as an alternative to needles to stimulate acupuncture points. We previously reported suppression of myostatin (Mstn) gene expression in skeletal muscle by means of femtosecond laser (FL) irradiation, after electroacupuncture, in which acupuncture needles are stimulated with a low-frequency microcurrent. The purpose of the study here was to investigate the efficacy of FL irradiation in mouse skeletal muscle with regard to protein synthesis. After irradiation of the hindlimbs, we first analyzed Mstn gene expression and Mstn protein level in the skeletal muscle. We then evaluated phosphorylation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and its downstream target 70-kDa ribosomal protein S6 kinase (p70S6K). The results showed that FL irradiation significantly reduced the amount of Mstn protein and enhanced the phosphorylation of p70S6K in of the mTOR/S6K signaling pathway. We suggest that FL irradiation activated the protein synthetic pathway in the skeletal muscle. In conclusion, we determined that FL irradiation can serve as an alternative for acupuncture needles and has the potential of being a new non-invasive acupuncture treatment of skeletal muscle.
KEYWORDS: Acupuncture therapy; Femtosecond laser; Myostatin; Skeletal muscle; mTOR; p70S6K
PMID: 27942989 DOI: 10.1007/s10103-016-2124-3
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