Abstract

Objective: Siguan points (LI4, LR3) have been most frequently applied for various diseases, especially different digestive disorders such as constipation, abdominal pain or various intestinal inflammatory diseases. The fact that gastrointestinal movement is closely connected with physiologic functions or pathologic process of alimentary canal led us to ask the question if Siguan points affects on intestinal motility. Design: To investigate the effect of Siguan acupuncture on the intestinal movement in both physiologic and pathologic conditions, we divided the experimental animals into 12 groups. Six groups were pre-treated with loperamide (0.5 mg/kg, sc) or scoploamine (0.5 mg/kg, sc) to suppress the intestinal movement and another three groups were pretreated with carbachol (0.5 mg/kg, po) to activate it, whereas the rest three groups didn’t receive any pretreatment to be kept in the physiological condition. After the administration with charcoal meal, mice were acupunctured bilaterally on sham point or Siguan points as the manner of tap-stimulation, with the exception of no acupuncture groups. Methods: Mice were scarified in twenty minutes after the administration of charcoal to measure the distance of charcoal passage from stomach-duodenal junction. The effect on intestinal movement was presented by calculating the relative distance where charcoal arrived to total length of small intestine. Results: In physiological state, charcoal meal passed around 53%, and there was no significant difference between Siguan points and sham points groups. On the other hand, Siguan points-stimulation significantly ameliorated loperamide or scoplolamine-induced suppressed travel rate of 17.3 % and 18.6 % in sham point into 26 % and 26.3 % respectively (P<0.05). In carbachol-induced accelerated condition, Siguan points-stimulation didn’t affect intestinal motility comparing to sham point group passed about 97.6 %. Conclusions: These results postulate that acupuncture at Siguan points have a therapeutic effect by restoring cholinergic activity on pathogenically suppressed intestinal peristalsis, but does not affect the gastrointestinal motility in the normal or accelerated condition.