Preliminary Study on Pain Reduction of Monosodium Iodoacetate-Induced Knee Osteoarthritis in Rats by Carbon Dioxide Laser Moxibustion

In order to study the effects of CO(2) 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 CO(2) 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 CO(2) 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.