By Jennifer Nachbur Article published November 12, 2002
Last fall, Dr. Helene Langevin, research assistant professor of neurology, reported in the Journal of Applied Physiology that the body's connective tissue appeared to be involved in the needle grasp response associated with acupuncture work. Langevin and her research team, supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, now will be able to look one level deeper into the tissue's cells — and the genes within those cells — that respond when an acupuncture needle is inserted into the skin. Her research team will collaborate with the Laboratory of Human Genetics and Integrative Medicine at the National Institute on Aging.
“Our next step is to find out how the cells in connective tissue are responding to acupuncture needling,” Langevin said. “We want to know what genes are getting activated as a result and what kind of impact their action has on the body.”
Langevin’s research findings and rigorous methodology have attracted a lot of attention from both alternative medicine supporters, national media and — most importantly — from the government agency that provides her funding. Her recent five-year, $1.8 million grant from the NIH’s Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is more than triple the original funding she received in 1999. Newsweek will include Langevin’s research in an alternative medicine article due to appear later this month. Last May, Massage magazine ran a six-page article on her study.
To accomplish their latest task, Langevin and colleagues in the departments of neurology, orthopaedics, pathology and biostatistics will be looking at connective tissue in both animals and humans. As they ramp up to begin the next phase of their study, the team will be developing new technologies to assist them in obtaining information, including something similar to the one-of-a-kind device developed for inserting, manipulating and removing the acupuncture needle Langevin used in her first study, in the General Clinical Research Center. Most of the new study's human subject testing will take place in the operating room at Fletcher Allen’s Medical Center Campus. Langevin expects they will begin recruiting study participants sometime in January.
In December, Langevin will publish a new article on the relationship between acupuncture meridians — the interconnected energy channels of the body mapped out in ancient Chinese texts — and connective tissue planes in the journal The Anatomical Record/The New Anatomist.
