Proteomic dissection of electroacupuncture’s efficacy at Ciliao acupoint for age-related stress urinary incontinence in mice

To investigate the therapeutic mechanism of electroacupuncture (EA) at the “Ciliao point” (BL32) in a mouse model of stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Thirty-six aged female C57BL/6 mice were randomly assigned to two groups: a model group (n = 18) and an EA treatment group (n = 18). The SUI model was established via vaginal distension. EA stimulation was applied at the Ciliao point beginning on day 2 post-modeling and continued for 7 consecutive days. Urodynamic parameters were assessed using lower urinary tract catheterization. Tandem Mass Tag (TMT) quantitative proteomics research method was used to analyze the anterior vaginal wall of the mice in the model group and the electroacupuncture group, and the differentially expressed proteins were screened out. The differential proteins were subjected to bioinformatics analysis such as hierarchical clustering analysis of expression levels, Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis, and protein–protein interaction analysis. The results showed that compared with the model group, the bladder leak point pressure (BLPP), maximum voiding pressure (ALPP), and maximum bladder capacity (MBC) values of mice in the electroacupuncture group all increased to a certain extent. Analysis of proteomics results showed that compared with the model group, there were a total of 317 differential proteins in the electroacupuncture group, including 257 up-regulated proteins and 60 down-regulated proteins. GO analysis enrichment showed that differential proteins may play an important role in cellular structure and intracellular localization; Kegg enrichment analysis showed that PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, Notch signaling pathway, NF-kappa B signaling pathway, estrogen signaling pathway and other pathways were significantly up-regulated, mainly focusing on immune activation and cell fate regulation; PPI network construction of differential proteins showed that 319 proteins with high comprehensive scores of interacting proteins include Asph, Tcap, Tnnc2, and other proteins. This study macroscopically analyzed protein changes and provided certain research ideas for electroacupuncture treatment of SUI.