Acupuncture normalizes brain structure following heroin relapse

Researchers have found that the structure of the ventral tegmental area in heroin relapse patients gradually normalizes after acupuncture treatment.

A research team from Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in China conducted their study on rats to verify the relationship between acupuncture, neurotrophic factor expression and brain cell structural changes and found that the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor also increased in the ventral tegmental area following acupuncture.

The study, which suggested that acupuncture protects brain neurons against injury with heroin relapse by promoting brain-derived neurotrophic factor and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor expression, was published in the Neural Regeneration Research.