Electroacupuncture Suppresses Myostatin Gene Expression: Cell Proliferative Reac

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Physiol Genomics. 2007 Mar 6

Electroacupuncture Suppresses Myostatin Gene Expression: Cell

Proliferative Reaction in Mouse Skeletal Muscle.

Takaoka Y, Ohta M, Ito A, Takamatsu K, Sugano A, Funakoshi K,

Takaoka N, Sato N, Yokozaki H, Arizono N, Goto S, Maeda E.

Laboratory for Applied Genome Science, Clinical Genome Informatics

Center, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan;

Department of Biochemistry, Iwate Medical University School of

Dentistry, Morioka, Japan.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) may provide patients

with an alternative to traditional medicine, but an assessment of

its efficacy is required. One CAM method, electroacupuncture (EA)

treatment, is a maneuver that utilizes stimulation of acupuncture

needles with a low-frequency microcurrent.

To study the effect of short-term EA, we evaluated the differential

expression of genes induced by EA in mouse skeletal muscle for up to

24 hours. We then used RT-PCR to confirm the expression patterns of

six differentially expressed genes. Bioinformatics analysis of their

transcription control regions showed that EA-inducible genes have

numerous common binding motifs that are related to cell

differentiation, cell proliferation, muscle repair, and hyperplasia.

These results suggested that EA treatment may induce cell

proliferation in skeletal muscle. To verify this possibility, we

used EA to stimulate mouse skeletal muscle daily for up to 1 month

and examined the long-term effects. Immunohistochemical analysis

showed that nuclei of muscle cells treated with EA for 1 month,

especially nuclei of satellite cells, reacted with anti-human PCNA.

Also, expression of the gene encoding myostatin, which is a growth

repressor in muscle satellite cells, was suppressed by daily EA

treatment for 1 week; EA treatment for 1 month resulted in more

marked suppression of the gene. These molecular findings constitute

strong evidence that EA treatment suppresses myostatin expression,

which leads to a satellite cell-related proliferative reaction and

repair in skeletal muscle.