Acupuncture injection eases Parkinson's pain in animal study, researchers say

Pharmacopuncture, a traditional Korean medicine technique, may offer a new way to relieve pain in Parkinson's disease patients — potentially replacing conventional painkillers and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that carry significant side effects.

A research team led by Dr. Kim No-su at the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine announced Tuesday that it had confirmed the analgesic effect and mechanism of pharmacopuncture in an animal model of Parkinson's disease-associated pain, in collaboration with a team led by Professor Park Sang-min of the College of Pharmacy at Chungnam National University.

Parkinson's disease is widely known for motor symptoms such as tremors, bradykinesia and rigidity, but patients also experience a range of non-motor symptoms including pain, sleep disturbances, depression and constipation.

Between 40 and 85 percent of Parkinson's patients experience pain, which significantly diminishes their quality of life.

Pharmacopuncture therapy involves injecting herbal medicine extracts directly into acupuncture points, combining the benefits of both pharmacological treatment and acupuncture. It has been reported to produce analgesic effects across various pain conditions. Among the formulations used, SU Eohyeol pharmacopuncture is known for improving blood circulation and suppressing inflammation, but its effects and mechanisms on Parkinson's-related pain had not previously been established.

The research team injected SU Eohyeol pharmacopuncture into the GB34 acupoint — known in Korean medicine as Yangneungcheon — in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease pain.

Yangneungcheon is an acupoint on the outer side of the lower leg that has long been used in Korean medicine to regulate motor function and manage pain.

In the experiments, Parkinson's disease animals showed heightened pain sensitivity, reacting acutely even to minor physical stimuli. In the group that received SU Eohyeol pharmacopuncture at the Yangneungcheon acupoint, however, the pain response threshold was up to approximately twice as high as in the control group, indicating that pain sensitivity was reduced following the injections.

By contrast, injecting the same pharmacopuncture solution at a non-acupoint site produced no clear analgesic effect.

Changes were also observed in brain and spinal cord tissue. In the pharmacopuncture group, markers associated with spinal pain signaling decreased, while markers related to dopaminergic neurons and neuroprotection showed partial recovery.

"Pain is one of the most representative non-motor symptoms that diminishes the quality of life for Parkinson's patients," Kim said. "This research is significant in that it confirmed, in an animal model, both the analgesic effect of Korean pharmacopuncture and its molecular biological mechanism in Parkinson's-related pain." He added that the team is currently analyzing clinical data to verify the safety and efficacy of pharmacopuncture and expects promising results.

The findings were published in May in Pain Research and Management, an international journal in the field of integrative medicine.