Motor Control Mechanisms by CNS of Tuina in Patients With Lumbar Disk Herniation

Overview

Lumbar disk herniation (LDH)is a prevalent health problem around the world. It can cause symptoms of low back pain, numbness or weakness.The understanding of low back pain in traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) theory"unbalanced bones and muscles"that is consistent with the description of modern medicine on LDH function pathology. Tuina is one of Diagnosis and treatment methods in TCM which has been used as a noninvasive treatment of LDH. However, the mechanism of Tuina therapy in LDH is still unclear.The purpose of this study is to establish a platform of the therapeutic effect and mechanical effect of LDH in the treatment of LDH，explore the characteristics of Tuina by the motor control in lumbar CNS,observe the patterns and regularities in the function of related brain regionin of patients with acute or chronic LDH and reveal the mechanism of Tuina of improving the control of lumbar spine CNS movement.

Clinical researches has demonstrated the effectiveness of Tuina on lumbar disc herniation (LDH), but the mechanism remains unclear.The existing researches mainly focus on the mechanical mechanism of the local stability reconstruction of the lumbar spine. Our previous study found that LDH patients have lumbar CNS motion control disorder, and preliminary studies have shown that Tuina can improve the lumbar CNS motion control efficiency, also fMRI studies found that abnormal motion related brain areas had an active trend during the acute phase and a suppressed trend in the chronic period.Therefore,we hypothesize that Tuina could improve the lumbar CNS motion control in LDH patients, and could response to the effect of local mechanical lumbar as well as bidirectionally regulate the function of lumbar stabilizers, which facilitates the stable reconstruction of lumbar. This project will illuminate the effect of Tuina improving the lumbar CNS motion control by applying the latest fMRI, surface electromyography and data mining technology to the acute and chronic LDH patients with a combination of efficacy and experimental verification to reveal the mechanism of CNS bidirectional regulation of paraspinal muscle activity by the response of related brain regions to mechanical effects after Tuina on the lumbar. This project provides a new thinking to the research of the therapeutic mechanism of LDH, which is a scientific significance.