Exploration of Molecular Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Tuina Therapy for Insomnia by Proteomics Analysis

Abstract

Insomnia, one of the most common mental disorder, not only affects the quality of life, but also damages physical and mental health. Therefore, it is very necessary to explore the molecular mechanism of insomnia and find some suitable treatments. At present, methods of using drugs to treat insomnia is not satisfactory due to lack of evidences and side effects. Hence, development of non-drug treatments is particularly important. Tuina, a Chinese massage method, has achieved certain therapeutic effects on injuries, rheumatism, neurological diseases and other types of diseases. We have treated patient with insomnia by Tuina, and obtained therapeutic effects indeed. In the current study, we used iTRAQ (isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantitation) quantitative proteomics to analyze plasma samples taken from the healthy control (HC) group, insomnia patients group (before Tuina treatment, BTT) and insomnia-therapy group (after Tuina treatment, ATT) to identify the molecular correlation of insomnia. In BTT vs HC, we found that the expression of many immune-related and stress-related proteins were out of control, and it revealed that Tuina had the capacities to regulate expression of immune-related and stress-related proteins in ATT vs BTT, suggesting that Tuina may improve insomnia by regulating immune-related and stress-related proteins. The proteomics verification results had been verified by commercial ELISA(Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. All in all,Our study not only found a good way to treat insomnia, but also provided a research foundation for improving insomnia.