Acupuncture ameliorates liver injury induced by platinum treatment through the Notch signaling pathway

Abstract This work aims to investigate whether acupuncture can ameliorate liver injury caused by platinum-based therapy and relevant mechanism. The liver indices of patients receiving and not receiving acupuncture were analyzed based on the clinical statistics, and it was found that after acupuncture treatment, the aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), albumin (ALB), and γ-glutamyltranspeptidase of the patients were significantly improved. Then, the animal experiments were conducted for verification. After treatment with cisplatin (DDP) modeling and acupuncture, the HE and Masson staining results of the livers of mice showed that the liver injuries were reduced, and the indexes of platelets, AST and ALT became normal after acupuncture treatment. The gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analysis indicated that acupuncture may ameliorates liver injury through the Notch signaling pathway. Under the effect of blocker γ-secretase inhibitor (DAPT) for the Notch signaling pathway, the expressions of inflammatory factors and the genes and proteins related to the Notch signaling pathway were all up-regulated, while the alleviation of liver injury by acupuncture was inhibited. These results suggest that acupuncture can ameliorate platinum treatment-induced liver injury through the Notch signaling pathway.