[Progress of studies on regulative effect of acupuncture on activities of vasoactive intestinal peptide]

Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) is a widely studied peptide hormone, distributes in multiple systems of the human body and plays a variety of biological effects in many diseases. In recent years, there have been abundant researches about the regulative effect of acupuncture on changes of VIP activities. The authors of the present paper make a review about its research progress in recent ten years from (1) effect of acupuncture on VIP functional activities of the gastrointestinal tract; (2) involvement of VIP in electroacupuncture (EA) induced improvement of gastric mucosal and cerebral blood flow (3) effect of EA on functions of VIP being as a neurotransmitter; (4) effect of EA on VIP-involved immune regulation function. Moreover, the authors also make a prospect on the correlation between the effect of acupuncture and VIP. Currently, the mechanism of VIP underlying the efficacy of acupuncture still remains unknown, and needs further investigation.