The effect of laser acupuncture on hypoxia tolerance and inflammation reaction in mice with optical fiber acupuncture needle intra body.

Hypoxia is a disorder in which the tissues are not oxygenated adequately. The lack of oxygen may cause irreversible damage to the major organs such as the brain, heart and lungs. In severe cases, coma, seizures, and death may happen. In addition to the routine medication, acupuncture treatment has been applied as a complementary treatment to counter hypoxia. In this paper, the optical fiber acupuncture needle was fabricated using the optical fiber imbedding into the metal capillary tube with needle tip, therefore made it easy to insert into the body for the laser treatment. The laser optical fiber needle treatment to the ST36 acupoint conducted with the laser irradiation intra body. The normobaric hypoxia tolerance test results in mice show that the optical fiber needle treatment to the ST36 acupoint with laser acupuncture appears to improve the tolerance to hypoxia. The mice treated with laser acupuncture expressed high level of IL-1 in serum. Our results suggest that laser optical fiber needle acupuncture may serve as a potential treatment for hypoxia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]