Progress of researches on the role of oxidative stress in acupuncture treatment of Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease commonly seen in middle-aged and elderly people. The incidence of PD is increasing year by year, which seriously affects the patients’ quality of life. Oxidative stress (OS) is one of the pathogeneses of PD. In recent years, with the deepening of research, it has been found that OS is closely related to other PD-related pathogenesis, such as the susceptibility of substantia nigra, mitochondrial dysfunction, abnormal folding of α-synuclein (α-Syn), nitric oxide (NO) increasing, endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS), decreased antioxidant capacity, etc., which is considered to be the central link of the complex convergence of various pathogenesis. A large number of studies also have shown that acupuncture has great potential in regulating OS and treatment of PD. In the present article, we reviewed the role of OS in PD pathology and the mechanism of acupuncture in the treatment of PD by improving OS in recent years: 1) acupuncture acts on Parkinson’s disease by increasing antioxidant enzyme levels, 2) acupuncture works in Parkinson’s disease by improving pathways related to OS (Nrf2/ARE, PI3K/Akt), 3) acupuncture acts on Parkinson’s disease by improving OS-related neuroinflammation, and 4) acupuncture acts on Parkinson’s disease by improving the cerebral-intestinal axis associated oxidative stress.