Electroacupuncture improved autism-like behaviors in VPA-model mice through gut microbiota changes that required an intact vagus nerve.
Evidence
This mouse model study used electroacupuncture, gut microbiota transplantation, inflammatory-marker analyses in cortex and hippocampus, and vagotomy in prenatal valproic acid-induced ASD mice.
Caveat
The evidence comes from an animal model, so it does not establish that electroacupuncture treats human autism spectrum disorder.
Simplified
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by behavioral and neurological abnormalities. Numerous pieces of evidence indicate a strong association between ASD and mediated by gut microbiota and microglial activation. Previous studies have shown that the therapeutic effects of an acupuncture protocol targeting the bacteria- in a well-established ASD mouse model induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA). We demonstrated that electroacupuncture significantly alleviates behavioral symptoms in VPA model. However, the precise mechanisms remain insufficiently elucidated. In this study, we confirmed that electroacupuncture markedly improved behavioral symptoms in ASD mice. We conducted gut microbiota transplantation from electroacupuncture-treated mice to untreated ASD mice, improving behavioral outcomes in untreated ASD mice. Conversely, by transplanting gut microbiota from ASD mice into electroacupuncture-treated mice, we successfully mitigated the beneficial behavioral effects of acupuncture. We analyzed inflammatory markers in the microglial activation from cerebral cortex and hippocampus tissues, revealing that acupuncture exerts robust anti-neuroinflammatory effects in ASD mice. To further validate the mechanism, we performed vagotomy in ASD mice, which abolished the therapeutic benefits of acupuncture. Our findings establish that the behavioral improvements observed in ASD mice are intricately linked to the diversity and abundance of gut microbiota. Furthermore, regulatory effects of electroacupuncture on ASD behaviors are mediated via bacteria-gut-brain axis, dependent on intact vagus nerve signaling. This study provides compelling evidence for the potential of acupuncture to modulate central neuroinflammation through vagus nerve-mediated gut microbiota regulation, offering novel avenue into its therapeutic application for neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD.
Key numbers
30
Increase in social interaction
Number of entries into the stranger mouse's chamber during social tests.
4
Reduction in inflammatory markers
Levels of IL-17A and TNF-α in cortical tissue samples of mice from different groups.
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