Clinical Trials Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 28, 2015; 21(16): 4986-4996
Published online Apr 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i16.4986
Moxibustion combined with acupuncture increases tight junction protein expression in Crohn’s disease patients
Hai-Xia Shang, An-Qi Wang, Chun-Hui Bao, Huan-Gan Wu, Wei-Feng Chen, Lu-Yi Wu, Rong Ji, Ji-Meng Zhao, Yin Shi
Hai-Xia Shang, An-Qi Wang, Lu-Yi Wu, Rong Ji, Ji-Meng Zhao, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, China
Chun-Hui Bao, Huan-Gan Wu, Yin Shi, Shanghai Institute of Acupuncture-Moxibustion and Meridian, Shanghai 200030, China
Wei-Feng Chen, Zhongshan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Author contributions: Shang HX, Wang AQ and Bao CH contributed equally to this work; Shi Y designed the study; Wang AQ, Bao CH and Wu LY contributed to the patient enrollment; Bao CH and Wu LY performed the moxibustion and acupuncture procedure; Chen WX performed enteroscopy and tissue sampling; Ji R and Shang HX performed the assays; Zhao JM analyzed the data; Wang AQ and Shang HX drafted the figures and wrote the manuscript; Wu HG and Shi Y conducted the study and revised the manuscript.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30772831, No. 81473757; and the National Basic Research Program of China, 973 Program, No. 2009CB522900.
Ethics approval: This study has been approved by the Ethics Committee of Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine approved the research project, No. 2009-02.
Clinical trial registration: This study is registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Register Center. The registration identification number is ChiCTR-TRC-10000950.
Informed consent: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: All authors stated that there is no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.
Data sharing: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at flysy0636@163.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Yin Shi, MD, PhD, Shanghai Institute of Acupuncture-Moxibustion and Meridian, No. 650 South Wanping Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200030, China. flysy0636@163.com
Telephone: +86-21-64383910 Fax: +86-21-64644238
Received: November 13, 2014
Peer-review started: November 15, 2014
First decision: December 2, 2014
Revised: December 9, 2014
Accepted: February 5, 2015
Article in press: February 5, 2015
Published online: April 28, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic relapsing inflammatory condition involving all layers of the gastrointestinal tract. Although its etiopathogenesis remains unclear, increased permeability of the intestinal epithelial barrier is one of the crucial factors in CD onset. Tight junctions (TJs) within intestinal epithelial cells form the structural basis of the intestinal epithelial barrier, and reduced expression of TJ proteins is positively correlated with CD severity. This study investigated the therapeutic effect of herb-partitioned moxibustion combined with acupuncture on CD. We found that this treatment upregulated the expression of intestinal epithelial TJ proteins and their mRNAs.