How traditional Chinese acupuncture with an electric twist could help fight cancer
- A team of researchers used charged needles to treat brain tumours in mice and found the ‘electro-chemotherapy’ caused cancer cells to ‘burst and die’
- Chinese scientists hope new technique could pave way to developing simple, safe and low-cost treatments for disease
Electrically charged acupuncture needles that can significantly reduce the size of tumours could open the way for a safe, low-cost cancer treatment, according to a new study.
A team of Chinese scientists adapted the traditional technique to create a form of “electro-chemotherapy” to treat laboratory mice with brain tumours, shrinking them to less than 1 per cent of their initial size.
The team, from the State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, inserted a pair of insulated needles into the heads of the mice and pierced the tumours with the charged tips – one negative and one positive.
When the electric current was turned on it broke water molecules down into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter making the cancer cells “burst and die”, according to a paper published this month in National Science Review.
The mice were given a twice-daily, 10-minute dose of the treatment over three consecutive days.