• Bing Yan, Shengyu Tang, Yuqiu Zhang, and Xiao Xiao.
• Key Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Ministry of Education; Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Center, Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence; MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
• Pain Med. 2023 Jan 4; 24 (1): 112411-24.

BackgroundAs a traditional Chinese therapy, acupuncture is proposed worldwide as a treatment for pain and other health problems, but findings on acupuncture analgesia have been inconsistent because of its variable modalities of therapeutic intervention.ObjectiveThis study aimed to evaluate the existing animal studies for evidence on acupuncture and its effect on glia in association with a reduction in pain conditions.MethodsLiterature searches were performed in four English- and Chinese-language databases (Web of Science, PubMed, EMBASE, and CNKI) on October 8, 2021. Included studies reported the pain outcome (e.g., paw withdrawal latency, paw withdrawal threshold) and glia outcome (e.g., glial marker GFPA, Iba1, and OX42) in pain-induced animals during acupuncture treatment.ResultsFifty-two preclinical studies were included in the meta-analysis. A single acupuncture treatment in rodents had an analgesic effect, which was more effective in inflammatory pain than in neuropathic pain in the early phase of treatment. The analgesic efficacy became more curative after repeated acupuncture. Furthermore, acupuncture treatment could effectively inhibit the activity of astrocytes and microglia in both inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain in a time-course pattern.ConclusionsAcupuncture treatment improves analgesic effect in rodent pain conditions under the possible mechanism of glial inhibition. Therefore, these results provide an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture analgesia and neuroinflammation in animal models to research further neurobiological mechanisms and to inform the design of future clinical trials.Study RegistrationPROSPERO (ID: CRD42020196011).© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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