Cerebral protective effect of acupuncture based on its regulative effect on programmed cell death.

Programmed cell death (PCD) in the brain occurs throughout the whole process of life, and abnormal PCD may be an important factor leading to encephalopathy. It has been demonstrated that acupuncture has a good cerebral protective effect in the treatment of epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, depression, anxiety, insomnia, migraine and other dozens of brain diseases, and possesses characteristics of multi-point, networking, two-way and holistic regulation. In the present paper, we sum up the protective effect of acupuncture therapy from 1) cell apoptosis (for example, improving post-surgery cognition impairment, traumatic brain injury and ischemic stroke by relieving mitochondrial damage, activating mitochondrial autophagy, increasing blood-brain barrier permeability, and thus reducing cell apoptosis ), 2) cell autophagy (for example, improving post-surgery cognition impairment, traumatic brain injury and ischemic stroke by relieving mitochondrial damage, activating mitochondrial autophagy, and increasing blood-brain barrier permeability, and thus reducing cell apoptosis), 3) pyroptosis (for example, inhibiting abnormally-activated inflammasomes, and caspase and gasdermin D activity to remit pyroptosis in the treatment of stroke, depression, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease animal models), 4) ferroptosis (for instance, regulating iron ion metabolism, relieving lipid peroxidation damage, and thus playing a brain protection role in the treatment of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke animal models), 5) necroptosis (inhibiting necrotic apoptosis mediated by receptor-interacting protein kinase 1 in intracerebral hemorrhage rats), and so on.

Acupuncture alleviates inflammatory pain by activating CXCL1/CXCR2 signaling in the primary somatosensory cortex in adjuvant induced arthritis rats.

Objectives: To observe whether acupuncture up-regulates chemokine CXC ligand 1 (CXCL1) in the brain to play an analgesic role through CXCL1/chemokine CXC receptor 2 (CXCR2) signaling in adjuvant induced arthritis (AIA) rats, so as to reveal its neuro-immunological mechanism underlying improvement of AIA.

Methods: BALB/c mice with relatively stable thermal pain reaction were subjected to planta injection of complete Freund adjuvant (CFA) for establishing AIA model, followed by dividing the AIA mice into simple AF750 (fluorochrome) and AF750+CXCL1 groups (=2 in each group). AF750 labeled CXCL1 recombinant protein was then injected into the mouse's tail vein to induce elevation of CXCL1 level in blood for simulating the effect of acupuncture stimulation which has been demonstrated by our past study.

Plasmonic NiN Cocatalyst Boosting Directional Charge Transfer and Separation toward Synergistic Photocatalytic-Photothermal Performance of Hydrogen and Benzaldehyde Production as Well as Bacterial Inactivation.

Charge separation and transfer are the dominating factors in achieving high activity of solar energy-based photocatalysis. Here, a plasmonic transition metal nitride, NiN, nanosheet was fabricated and employed as an efficient cocatalyst to couple with CdZnS (CZS) solid solution via a self-assembly method to form a novel NiN/CZS heterojunction with an intimate interface. On one hand, localized surface plasmon resonance of the NiN nanosheets endowed the fabricated NiN/CZS composite with a wide-spectrum light absorption capacity, even to the near-infrared range.

Boosting Interfacial Charge Transfer with a Giant Internal Electric Field in a TiO Hollow-Sphere-Based S-Scheme Heterojunction for Efficient CO Photoreduction.

The construction of an S-scheme charge transfer pathway is considered to be a powerful way to inhibit charge recombination and maintain photogenerated carriers with high redox capacity to meet the kinetic requirements of the carbon dioxide (CO) photoreduction reaction. For an S-scheme heterojunction, an internal electric field (IEF) is regarded as the main driving force for accelerating the interfacial spatial transfer of photogenerated charges. Herein, we designed a TiO hollow-sphere (TH)-based S-scheme heterojunction for efficient CO photoreduction, in which WO nanoparticles (WP) were applied as an oxidation semiconductor to form an intimate interfacial contact with the TH.