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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry

Sec. Sleep Disorders

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1613408

Electroacupuncture as Adjunctive Therapy for Insomnia via Targeting the GABAergic Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: A Mini Review

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Department of Ultrasound, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, School of Medicine, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
  • 2Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, School of Medicine, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
  • 3Department of Physiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Insomnia, affecting up to 30% of adults (typically 18-65 years), is characterized by GABAergic dysfunction and hyperarousal. This mini-review establishes three pivotal advances in insomnia therapeutics: Firstly, it is demonstrated that microbiotagut-brain axis (MGBA) dysregulation is mechanistically central to insomnia, directly linking gut dysbiosis to vagal, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA), and γaminobutyric acid (GABA) axis dysfunction and neuroinflammation. Secondly, the present study documents the unique multitarget effects of electroacupuncture (EA), which have been shown to simultaneously normalize HPA axis activity, enrich GABAproducing microbiota, improve the vagal tone, and suppress neuroimmune activation.The aforementioned effects collectively resolve insomnia's multifactorial etiology.Thirdly, clinical evidence confirms the sustained efficacy of EA to be comparable to that of hypnotics, yet with superior safety and durability. EA redefines therapeutic frameworks by integrating biological and neural interventions that are inaccessible to single-target approaches.

Keywords: insomnia, Electroacupuncture, γ-Aminobutyric acid, Gut Microbiota, Microbiota-gut-brain axis

Received: 17 Apr 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Yan, Zhang, Liu and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Xiang Liu, Department of Physiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States
Bin Yang, Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, School of Medicine, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

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