Abstract
In order to study the effects of CO2 laser moxibustion on the pain and inflammatory cytokine expression in the spinal dorsal horn of rats with monosodium iodoacetate- (MIA-) induced knee osteoarthritis (KOA), we designed an experiment by randomly assigning 8 SD rats into 3 groups, namely, a CO2 laser moxibustion group, a sham treatment group, and a blank control group. The treatment group received a laser moxibustion on acupoint Dubi (ST 35; 5 min/treatment, 1 treatment/day) for 8 days, and after treatment, the rats exhibited significantly increased interhindpaw differences compared with their preinduction values. Meanwhile, cytokine microarray analysis showed that one cytokine (TIMP-1) was significantly upregulated and two cytokines (Agrin and MMP-8) were significantly downregulated in treatment group. The present study suggested that CO2 laser moxibustion created certain pain reduction in the rats with MIA-induced KOA and significantly inhibited the expression of most inflammatory cytokines in the ipsilateral spinal dorsal horn.