Effect and Potential Mechanism of Electroacupuncture Add-On Treatment in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Table 4

Levels of neuroinflammatory factors and neurotransmitters in serum before and after EA add-on treatment in the D + EA group, and before and after 2 months in the D group.

	D + EA group			D group
	Before EA	After EA		Before 2 months	After 2 months
Neuroinflammatory factors
NO [mmol/L, median (quartile)]	29.927 (17.153–51.460)	83.108 (63.869–106.081)	0.002	29.927 (16.970–50.182)	116.891 (93.598–145.946)	0.000
IL-1β [pg/mL, median (quartile)]	4.160 (2.445–6.187)	6.647 (4.191–9.817)	0.055	7.527 (5.536–8.839)	9.170 (5.025–12.279)	0.204
PGE2 [pg/mL, median (quartile)]	10.105 (4.167–50.510)	9.745 (6.876–16.922)	0.292	6.081 (4.612–13.875)	10.364 (7.449–12.968)	0.232
TNF-α [pg/mL, median (quartile)]	63.715 (42.480–70.383)	70.741 (44.571–122.699)	0.218	65.407 (61.229–68.284)	81.852 (47.271–114.851)	0.058
Neurotransmitters
NE [μg/mL, median (quartile)]	0.132 (0.088~1.021)	1.453 (1.216~1.801)	0.002	0.114 (0.096–1.109)	0.799 (0.423–1.382)	0.093
Ach [nmol/L, median (quartile)]	0.007 (0.004~0.016)	0.011 (0.009~0.014)	0.024	0.008 (0.005–0.012)	0.016 (0.009–0.021)	0.445
DA [μg/mL, median (quartile)]	1.688 (0.002~2.737)	1.959 (0.764~3.037)	0.073	1.780 (1.165–2.593)	1.797 (1.162–2.691)	0.646
5-HT [μg/mL, median (quartile)]	0.236 (0.143~1.313)	0.486 (0.129~1.205)	0.761	0.232 (0.199–0.301)	0.307 (0.169–0.608)	0.241

Values are median (lower quartile, upper quartile) for the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
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