Neurophysiological Mechanisms of Acupuncture Analgesia in Experimental Animal Models

摘要: Acupuncture and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) are two different procedures which result in analgesia by of peripheral tissues. Acupuncture, using either the traditional technique manual rotation needles [3, 35, 36, 62] or electroacupuncture [2, 3, 36], has been used successfully as an anesthetic [5, 32] a treatment for chronic pain [6,24,42,61]. TENS widely West to produce clinically, well experimental animal models [31, 44, 50, 56, 63, 73]. Like TENS, effects acupuncture appear be due activation fibers [11, 22, 25, 43, 53, 59, 69]. Although is effective producing analgesia, reported effectiveness varies greatly between studies. For example, studies performed alone, produced ranges from mild effect one spectacular enough allow performance open heart surgery [32]. Not only but also methodology laboratories. frequency several pulses per second 26] 10 KHz [43,48]. The lack standard method application inconsistency primarily incomplete understanding mechanisms (and TENS) hampers further development technique.