A Brief Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medical Elongated Needle Therapy on Acute Spinal Cord Injury and Its Mechanism

Acute spinal cord injury is one of the most common and complicated diseases among human spinal injury. We aimed to explore the effect of point-through-point acupuncture therapy with elongated needles on acute spinal cord injury in rabbits and its possible mechanism. Adult rabbits were randomly divided into a model group, elongated needle therapy group, and blank group. Immunohistochemical staining showed that the protein levels of Fas and caspase-3 in the model group were significantly higher than those in the blank group at each time point (P < 0.05) and significantly lower than those in the elongated needle therapy group on the 3rd and 5th days after operation (P < 0.05). RT-PCR showed that Fas and caspase-3 mRNA levels in the model group and elongated needle therapy group were significantly higher than those in the blank group (P < 0.05, 0.01). The mRNA levels of Fas and caspase-3 in the elongated needle therapy group were significantly lower than those in model group on the 3rd day (P < 0.05, 0.01). Therefore, we confirmed that elongated needle therapy has an obvious effect on acute spinal cord injury in rabbits. Its mechanism is made possible by inhibiting the expression of the Fas→caspase-3 cascade, thereby inhibiting cell apoptosis after spinal cord injury.