Transcutaneous Electrical Acupoint Stimulation Ameliorates Cognitive Function through PINK1/Parkin Mediated Mitophagy in VD Rats

Abstract

In this study, we investigated whether transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) could improve cognitive function in VD rats by regulating PINK1/Parkin-mediated mitophagy. VD rat model was prepared by modified 2-vessel occlusion (2-VO) and randomly divided into four groups: Sham group (Sham), Model group (Model), TEAS group (TEAS), and TEAS + 3-MA group (T +3 -MA). In the T +3 -MA group, autophagy inhibitor (3-MA) was injected into the lateral ventricle. After modeling, Y maze (YM), new object recognition test (NORT), Morris water maze (MWM), immunofluorescence, and Western blot were used to observe the effects of TEAS on VD rats. Behavioral experiments revealed that TEAS effectively improved the learning and memory ability of VD rats. Immunofluorescence results showed that TEAS could upregulate LC3 expression. Western blot results showed that TEAS upregulated the expression of PINK1, Parkin, and LC3-II, and downregulated the expression of LC3-I and p62 in VD rats. T +3 -MA group shows the opposite trend to TEAS group. This study demonstrates that TEAS ameliorates cognitive function through PINK1/Parkin-mediated mitophagy in VD rats.

Transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation for the prevention of postoperative delirium in elderly surgical patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…It has shown that TEAS reduced the values of S100β at the end of surgery and 1 day after surgery, and the values of IL-6 on the 1st postoperative day ( Gao et al, 2018 ). TEAS could reduce hippocampal neurons apoptosis by increasing the Bcl-2/Bax ratio and inhibiting activated caspase-3 expression, and improve mitophagy by upregulating PINK1, Parkin, and LC3-II expression and downregulating LC3-I and p62 expression ( Hu et al, 2022 ). Similar to acupuncture, TEAS may also improve cerebral blood flow and brain metabolism, alleviate perioperative hypotension, reduce anesthetic and analgesic consumption, and improve sleep disorders ( Ho et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ).…”