Mechanisms Underlying the Antidepressant Response of Acupuncture via PKA/CREB Signaling Pathway

Table 3

Differences showing the effects of stress/antidepressant treatments on the expression levels of hippocampal PKA-α, CREB, and p-CREB in depression rats induced by CUMS.

Group	n	PKA-α/GAPDH	CREB/GAPDH	p-CREB/GAPDH
Control	10	3.277 ± 0.964	1.673 ± 0.226	1.268 ± 0.405
Model	10	2.089 ± 0.614^★★	1.665 ± 0.107	0.733 ± 0.197^★★
Acu	10	3.185 ± 0.579^▲▲	1.666 ± 0.124	1.117 ± 0.211^▲
FLX	10	3.048 ± 0.425^▲	1.612 ± 0.366	1.037 ± 0.164
Acu + H89	10	3.057 ± 0.473^▲	1.478 ± 0.463	0.671 ± 0.295^★★,◆◆
FLX + H89	10	3.067 ± 0.595^▲	1.572 ± 0.382	0.619 ± 0.204^★★,■■

Acu: acupuncture group; FLX: fluoxetine group; Acu + H89: Acupuncture + H89 group; FLX + H89: Fluoxetine + H89 group; PKA-α: protein kinase A-α; CREB: cyclic adenosine monophosphate response element-binding protein; p-CREB: Phosphor-CREB; GAPDH: glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. Differences are shown as follows: ^★★ versus control group; ^▲ versus model group; ^▲▲ versus model group; ^◆◆ versus acupuncture group; ^■■ versus fluoxetine group. Results are presented as for 10 rats in each group.