Electroacupuncture reduced labour pain in rats by suppressing spinal inflammatory signalling and uterine prostaglandin receptor activity.
Pregnant rats underwent chemically induced labour and were assigned to no treatment, opioid pain relief, or electroacupuncture applied at either spinal-adjacent or traditional limb acupuncture points. Labour pain was assessed using a heat-based tail withdrawal test, while blood prostaglandin levels and inflammatory signalling molecules in uterine, spinal cord, and brain tissues were examined through protein and gene-expression analyses.
Both electroacupuncture approaches relieved labour pain and lowered circulating prostaglandin levels. They also reduced prostaglandin receptor expression in the uterus and suppressed phospholipase and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase activity in the lumbar spinal cord, with more limited effects in brain tissue, suggesting that spinal inflammatory pathways are central to the analgesic effect.
