Expression levels of the hypothalamic AMPK gene determines the responsiveness of the rats to electroacupuncture-induced analgesia

Sun K. Kim, Boram Sun, Heera Yoon, Ji H. Lee, Giseog Lee, Sung Hwa Sohn, Hyunseong Kim, Fu S. Quan, Insop Shim, Joohun Ha, Byung Il Min, Hyunsu Bae

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: Although electroacupuncture (EA) relieves various types of pain, individual differences in the sensitivity to EA analgesia have been reported, causing experimental and clinical difficulties. Our functional genomic study using cDNA microarray identified that 5'-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a well-known factor in the regulation of energy homeostasis, is the most highly expressed gene in the hypothalamus of the rats that were sensitive to EA analgesia (" responder" ), as compared to the rats that were insensitive to EA analgesia (" non-responder" ). In this study, we investigated the causal relationship between the hypothalamic AMPK and the individual variation in EA analgesia.Methods: Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were divided into the responder and the non-responder groups, based on EA-induced analgesic effects in the tail flick latency (TFL) test, which measures the latency of the tail flick response elicited by radiant heat applied to the tail. Real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed to quantify the expression levels of AMPK mRNA in the hypothalamus of the responder and non-responder rats. Further, we examined whether viral manipulation of the AMPK expression in the hypothalamus modulates EA analgesia in rats.Results: The real-time RT-PCR analysis showed that mRNA expression levels of AMPK in the hypothalamus of the responder rats are significantly higher than those of the non-responder rats, validating the previous microarray results. Microinjection of dominant negative (DN) AMPK adenovirus, which inhibits AMPK activity, into the rat hypothalamus significantly attenuates EA analgesia (p < 0.05), whereas wild type (WT) AMPK virus did not affect EA analgesia (p > 0.05).Conclusions: The present results demonstrated that levels of AMPK gene expression in the rat hypothalamus determine the individual differences in the sensitivity to EA analgesia. Thus, our findings provide a clinically useful evidence for the application of acupuncture or EA for analgesia.

Original languageEnglish
Article number211
JournalBMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Volume14
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2014

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MEST-2012-0005755 and NRF-2013R1A1A1012403).

Keywords

  • 5'-AMP-activated protein kinase
  • Adenovirus
  • Analgesia
  • Electroacupuncture
  • Hypothalamus
  • Nonresponder
  • Rats
  • Responder

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Expression levels of the hypothalamic AMPK gene determines the responsiveness of the rats to electroacupuncture-induced analgesia'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this