The Effect of Wet Cupping Therapy on Anxiety and Thiol/Disulfide Homeostasis in Premature Ovarian Failure: An Experimental Study

Abstract

ABS TRACT Objective: The effect of wet cupping therapy on anxiety and thiol/disulfide homeostasis was evaluated in rats with premature ovarian failure (POF) induced by cyclophosphamide (CYC). Material and Methods: Twenty four Wistar Albino female rats were divided into control (n=6), POF (n=6), wet cupping (n=6), POF+wet cupping (n=6) groups. CYC at a dose of 200 mg/kg was injected intraperitoneally to POF and POF+wet cupping groups. One week later, wet cupping therapy was applied to wet cupping and POF+wet cupping groups for 5 minutes. The next day, Open Field Test and Elevated Plus Maze Test were applied to all experimental groups to evaluate anxiety. After sac-rification, to assess pattern formation, endometrial thickness and ova- rian reserve were measured with hematoxylin-eosin staining. Thiol/disulfide homeostasis and erythrocyte oxidized-reduced glutat- hione levels were measured in serum to measure oxidative stress. Re-sults: Although there was no statistical significance, it was observed that anxiety decreased in POF+wet cupping compared to POF group. There was no change in thiol-disulfide values in POF+wet cupping compared to POF group (p>0.05). Conclusion: Wet cupping therapy did not reduce anxiety in the experimental POF model and did not shift the balance to positive in thiol/disulfide homeostasis in favor of thiols. However, the obtained graphics, numerical data and high standard de- viation suggest that meaningful data could be obtained with more subjects.