Mechanism of relation among heart meridian, referred cardiac pain and heart

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that an important clinical phenomenon often associated with visceral diseases is the referred pain to somatic structures, especially to the body area of homo-segmental innervation. It is interesting that the somatic foci of cardiac referred pain were often and mainly distributed along the heart meridian (HM), whereas the acupoints of HM have been applied to treat cardiac disease since ancient times. The purpose of this study was to investigate the neural relationship between the cardiac referred pain and the heart meridian. Fluorescent triple-labeling was injected into the pericardium, some acupoints of HM and lung meridian (LM, for control). The responses of the left cardiac sympathetic nerve and of the EMG in left HM and LM were electrophysiologically studied, when the electrical stimuli were applied to the acupoints of left HM and to the left cardiac sympathetic nerve. More double-labeled neurons in HM-heart, not in LM-heart, were observed in the ipsilateral dorsal root ganglia of the spinal segments C8-T3. Electric stimulation of the acupoints of left HM was able to elicit more responses of left cardiac sympathetic nerve than that of the LM-acupoints. Electric stimulation of the left cardiac sympathetic nerve resulted in stronger activities of EMG-response in the acupoints of left HM than in LM-acupoints. We conclude that double-labeling study has provided direct evidence for the existence of dichotomizing afferent fibers that supply both the pericardium and HM. Electrophysiological results show that HM is more closely related functionally to heart. These findings provide a possible morphological and physiological explanation for the referred cardiac pain and HM-heart interrelation.