Abstract:Wistar rats were given electrical stimulation via fine stainless steel needles inserted into the hind leg points, and tail flick latency was measured as endpoint of nociception.Most of the rats show an analgesic effect in response to electroacupuncture(EA) stimulation, designated as responders, as contrast to the non-responders which show no singnificant increase in pain threshold under the same stimulation. Previous studies have shown that cholecystokinin octapeptide(CCK-8) in the central nervus system is a potent anti-opioid substance which plays an antagonistic role on EA-induced analgesia. In this study we found that intracerebroventricular(icv) injection of antisense CCK vector encapsulated with lipofection to non-responder rat resulted in a potentiation of EA analgesia, i. e., changing non-responder into responder. This effect lasted for one week, and disappeared in 9 days.Control rats receiving empty plasmid pSV2-EP and lipofectin depicted a temporal augmentation of EA analgesia, which vanished after 4 days. The difference between pSV2-CCKAS lipofectin group and pSV2-EP lipofectin group was statistically very significant (P<0. 05 in day 4, P<0. 01 in day 6). Conversion from non-responder to responder could also be made possible by subcutaneous injection of CCKB receptor antagonist L365, 260. The results suggest that it is feasible to increase the efficacy of EA analgesia by suppressing CCK gene expression in CNS or by blockade of CCK receptor, thus changing non-responder into responder.