Laser acupuncture on ST36 promotes serum protein concentration in adolescent rats

• Main Authors: Selfi Handayani, Ari Handono Ramelan, Kristanto Yuli Yarsa, Dono Indarto, Bambang Purwanto, Koosnadi Saputro, Didik G Tamtomo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: DiscoverSys 2018-10-01
• Series: Bali Medical Journal
• Subjects: laser acupuncture, protein serum, adolescent, rat
• Online Access: https://balimedicaljournal.org/index.php/bmj/article/view/1170

<p><strong>Background</strong>: In the last decade, laser technology has been used in medicine for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The low-level laser has been applied to acupoints (<em>laser acupuncture</em>/LA) which had potential to stimulate the expression of enzyme and hormone in various biological processes. Since the enzyme and majority of hormone is a protein or its derivatives, this study aimed to measure serum protein concentration in adolescent rats treated with laserpuncture.</p><p><strong>M</strong><strong>ethods</strong>: Forty male three weeks old Wistar rats weighed ≥ 40 g were randomly divided into either group A or B. Each group was evenly divided into four subgroups which were a negative control and treated with LA on GV20, ST 36 or combination of GV 20+ST 36 respectively. These acupoints were then stimulated by continuous wave cold red laser (635-680nm/5mW) generated by KX Laser GX-2000B. LA was performed at 60 seconds/day for ten days (group A) and 15 days (group B). Venous blood was collected from sinus orbitalis, and Serum protein concentration was measured using the Bradford assay. The data were analyzed using ANOVA test and p-value &lt; 0.05 was considered as significant. <strong>Results</strong>: A higher protein concentration was observed in ST36A group (76.326±15.084 mg/ml) and GV20+ST36A group (75.044±15.346 mg/ml) compared with control group A (67.338±12,476 mg/ml).</p><p>Meanwhile,GV20A group had lower protein level than control group at 57.838±11.042 mg/ml. By contrast, all treated rats in group B had higher protein concentrations (74.158±12.754; 79.373±7.265 and 77.854±2.552 mg/ml respectively) compared to control group B (72.292±7.987 mg/ml). However, the difference in protein concentrations in both groups did not statistically significantly (p=0.161 and p=0.541 respectively). <strong>Conclusion</strong>: LA on the ST 36 acupoint has the greatest effect on increasing protein concentration in male adolescent Wistar rats although the difference was not statistically significant.</p><p align="center"> </p>