Study on the Mechanism of mTOR-Mediated Autophagy during Electroacupuncture Pretreatment against Cerebral Ischemic Injury

This study is aimed at investigating the association between the electroacupuncture (EA) pretreatment-induced protective effect against early cerebral ischemic injury and autophagy. EA pretreatment can protect cerebral ischemic and reperfusion injuries, but whether the attenuation of early cerebral ischemic injury by EA pretreatment was associated with autophagy is not yet clear. This study used the middle cerebral artery occlusion model to monitor the process of ischemic injury. For rats in the EA pretreatment group, EA pretreatment was conducted at Baihui acupoint before ischemia for 30 min for 5 consecutive days. The results suggested that EA pretreatment significantly increased the expression of autophagy in the cerebral cortical area on the ischemic side of rats. But the EA pretreatment-induced protective effects on the brain could be reversed by the specific inhibitor 3-methyladenine of autophagy. Additionally, the Pearson correlation analysis indicated that the impact of EA pretreatment on p-mTOR (2481) was negatively correlated with its impact on autophagy. In conclusion, the mechanism of EA pretreatment at Baihui acupoint against cerebral ischemic injury is mainly associated with the upregulation of autophagy expression, and its regulation of autophagy may depend on mTOR-mediated signaling pathways.