Establishment of a Standardized Protocol of Spine-Pinching Manipulation for a Rat Model of Pediatric Asthma.

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic inflammatory airway disease in children and is characterized by chronic airway inflammation, airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR), and airway remodeling. In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), spine-pinching manipulation (SP) is a widely used pediatric massage technique for managing asthma and other childhood diseases. Despite a history of clinical use spanning more than 1,000 years, SP remains largely unfamiliar outside China. Moreover, the mechanisms underlying SP remain insufficiently characterized. This article describes a feasible and standardized protocol for SP that replicates the essential procedures used in clinical practice. Application of the protocol improved airway inflammation, AHR, and airway remodeling in a juvenile rat model of asthma. To enhance reproducibility, key procedural parameters were standardized, including finger pressure, manipulation frequency, number of repetitions, and intervention duration. The standardized protocol in this study may serve as a reference for further research on SP standardization and its underlying mechanisms in experimental pediatric asthma.