<p style="text-align: center;"><br/></p><p style="text-align: center;">Youjiang MIN, Li qiang DING, Lihong CHENG, Weiping XIAO, Xingwei HE, Hui ZHANG, Zhiyun MIN, Jia PEI</p><p style="text-align: center;">（1 Affiliated Hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China 2 Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China）</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Abstract</strong>:&nbsp; Electroacupuncture&nbsp; is&nbsp; beneficial&nbsp; for&nbsp; the&nbsp; recovery&nbsp; of&nbsp; spinal&nbsp; cord&nbsp; injury,&nbsp; but&nbsp; the underlying&nbsp; mechanism&nbsp; is&nbsp; unclear.&nbsp; The&nbsp; Rho/Rho-associated&nbsp; kinase&nbsp; (ROCK)&nbsp; signaling&nbsp; pathway regulates the actin cytoskeleton by controlling the adhesive and migratory behaviors of cells that could&nbsp; inhibit neurite regrowth after neural injury and consequently hinder the recovery from spinal cord injury. Therefore, we hypothesized electroacupuncture could affect the Rho/ROCK signaling pathway to promote the recovery of spinal cord injury. In our experiments, the spinal cord injury in&nbsp; adult&nbsp; Sprague-Dawley&nbsp; rats&nbsp; was&nbsp; caused&nbsp; by&nbsp; an&nbsp; impact&nbsp; device.&nbsp; Those&nbsp; rats&nbsp; were&nbsp; subjected&nbsp; to electroacupuncture at Yaoyangguan (GV3), Dazhui (GV14),&nbsp; Zusanli (ST36) and Ciliao (BL32) and/or&nbsp; monosialoganglioside&nbsp; treatment.&nbsp; Behavioral&nbsp; scores&nbsp; revealed&nbsp; that&nbsp; the&nbsp; hindlimb&nbsp; motor functions&nbsp; improved&nbsp; with those&nbsp; treatments.&nbsp; Real-time&nbsp; quantitative&nbsp; polymerase&nbsp; chain&nbsp; reaction, fluorescence&nbsp; in&nbsp; situ&nbsp; hybridization&nbsp; and&nbsp; western&nbsp; blot&nbsp; assay&nbsp; showed&nbsp; that&nbsp; electroacupuncture suppressed the mRNA and protein expression of Rho-A and Rho-associated&nbsp; kinase II (ROCKII) of injured spinal cord. Although monosialoganglioside promoted the recovery of hindlimb motor function, monosialoganglioside&nbsp; did not affect the expression of Rho-A and ROCKII. However, electroacupuncture&nbsp; combined&nbsp; with&nbsp; monosialoganglioside&nbsp; did&nbsp; not&nbsp; further&nbsp; improve&nbsp; the&nbsp; motor function&nbsp; or&nbsp; suppress&nbsp; the&nbsp; expression&nbsp; of&nbsp; Rho-A&nbsp; and&nbsp; ROCKII.&nbsp; Our&nbsp; data&nbsp; suggested&nbsp; that&nbsp; the electroacupuncture&nbsp; could specifically inhibit the activation of the Rho/ROCK signaling pathway thus&nbsp; partially&nbsp; contributing&nbsp; to&nbsp; the&nbsp; repair&nbsp; of&nbsp; injured&nbsp; spinal&nbsp; cord.&nbsp; Monosialoganglioside&nbsp; could promote the motor function but did not suppress expression of RhoA and ROCKII. There was no synergistic effect of electroacupuncture combined with monosialoganglioside.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Key&nbsp; words</strong>:&nbsp; &nbsp;nerve&nbsp; regeneration,&nbsp; spinal&nbsp; cord&nbsp; injury,electroacupuncture,&nbsp; Rho/Rho-associated&nbsp;</p><p>kinase signaling pathway, monosialoganglioside</p><p><br/></p>