Efficacy of femtosecond lasers for application of acupuncture therapy

Abstract

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.

Effects of laser needle-knife therapy on vertebroarterial morphology and protein expression of PI-3K, AKT and VEGF in the carotid artery in a rabbit model of cervical spondylotic arteriopathy

“…Through investigation of its effects on neuralgia, Butkovic and Tot (2017) found that laser needle-knife was an effective method of relieving hyperalgia and paralgesia. According to research conducted by Ohta et al (2017) in which the effects of laser electro-acupuncture on protein synthesis in mouse skeletal muscles were investigated, laser radiation was believed to significantly inhibit the protein expression of MSTN and increase the phosphorylation of P70S6K within the mTOR/S6signaling pathway. As described by Jittiwat (2007), who studied the impact of using a laser needle-knife on brain injury, cortical oxidation and the quantity of superoxide dismutase in the mitochondria of animals at the site of focal ischemic stroke, the volume of cerebral infarction reduced in the case of cerebral ischemia due to a decrease in oxidative stress.…”

Applications of the femtosecond laser-induced impulse to cell research

“…These characteristics of the impulsive force allowed us to realize several kinds of new manipulation for cells and proteins. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] In addition to such cell manipulation, we considered the impulsive force can be utilized for the evaluation of intercellular adhesion strength. The need for evaluation at single-cell resolution is increased with progress in microscope imaging techniques.…”

“…The impulsive force can be tuned to be over a million times larger than the force by the optical tweezers, though the force loading time is only a few microseconds. By virtue of the unique characteristics of the impulsive force, we have developed several types of manipulation methods for cells and proteins, 15) such as cell patterning, [16][17][18] photoporation, [19][20][21][22] cell stimulation, [23][24][25] cell sorting in a microchip 26,27) and protein crystallization. [28][29][30] Our methods realize high-speed and high-precision single-cell manipulation compared with other methods.…”