[Effects of electroacupuncture intervention on blood lipid levels and expression of CD 40 L and MMP-9 in the coronary artery tissue in coronary heart disease rats].

OBJECTIVE

To observe the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) of "Neiguan" (PC 6) and "Xinshu" (BL 15) on levels of serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and expression of T cell CD 40 L and matrix metalloproteinases-9 (MMP-9) in the coronary artery in coronary heart disease (CHD) rats, so as to reveal its mechanism underlying improvement of coronary atherosclerotic heart disease.

METHODS

A total of 60 Wistar rats were randomly divided into normal control, model, EA-pretreatment, routine EA and medication groups (n = 12). Coronary atherosclerotic heart disease model was established by feeding the animals with high fat forage for 3 months and intraperitoneal injection of VD3 (2 mL/kg, 60 000 IU/100 g, once daily for 3 days). EA was applied to unilateral "Neiguan"(PC 6) and "Xinshu"(BL 15) once every other day for rats of the EA-pretreatment group from the 1st day of modeling on for 12 weeks, and once daily for rats of the routine EA group from successful modeling on for 2 weeks. Rats of the medication group were treated by intragastric administration of Atorvastatin 0. 25 mg . kg-1 . d-1 for 2 weeks. Serum TC, TG, HDL and LDL contents were detected by ELISA and the expression levels of CD 40 L and MMP-9 of the coronary artery tissue assayed by Western blot.

RESULTS

Serum contents of TC, TG and LDL and expression levels of coronary arterial CD 40 L and MMP-9 in the model group were significantly higher than those of the normal control group( P<0.01), while serum HDL content was decreased considerably in the mo- del group (P<0. 01). In comparison with the model group, the contents of serum TC, TG, HDL and the expression levels of arterial CD 40 L and MMP-9 in both EA-pretreatment group and routine EA group were remarkably down-regulated (P<0. 01), and serum LDL content was obviously up-regulated (P<0. 01). The effects of the EA-pretreatment group were significantly superior to those of the medication group in down-regulating the contents of serum TC, TG, HDL and decreasing the expression of coronary arterial CD 40 L and MMP-9 proteins (P<0. 01, P<0. 05). No significant differences were found between the EA-pretreatment and routine EA groups in all the 6 indexes (P>0. 05).

CONCLUSION

Both EA-pretreatment and routine EA of PC 6 and BL 15 can down-regulate blood TC, TG and HDL contents, raise serum HDL level and suppress the increased expression of CD 40 L and MMP-9 proteins of coronary artery tissue in rats with coronary atherosclerotic heart disease, which may contribute to their effect in improving CHD.