Abstract:Objective:To study the effects of acupuncture on pain behavior and the mechanism of acupuncture on improving chronic inflammation. Methods: We randomly divided 18 C57BL/6J male mice aged 6 to 8 weeks into three groups. The model and the acupuncture groups were administered with 3 mg/kg lipopolysaccharide (LPS) by intraperitoneal injection to induce chronic inflammation.while the control was administered with 4 ml/kg saline by intraperitoneal injection. The acupuncture group was treated by acupuncture at bilateral zusanli points (ST 36). After different treatments,Von Frey fiber filament was performed to detect mechanical withdrawal threshold(MWT) of the mice in each group. The content of tumor necrosis factor-α(TNF-α) in each group was detected by euzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Bilateral dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons were performed to detect the heat pain related transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) expression differences by Westem blot. Results: Compared with the model group, acupuncture increased the MWT significantly (P<0.05) .decreased the serum TNF-α content significantly (P<0.05) and TRPV1 protein expression of DRG neurons(P<0.05). Conclusion:Acupuncture treatment could reduce the expression of inflammatory cytokines, but also changed the expression of TRPV1 in DRG neurons,so as to suppress the pain caused by chronic inflammation.