Fig. 1

The establishment of the gout arthritis mouse model and EA’s intervention on pain in mice. A Representative photos showing ipsilateral ankles injected with sterile PBS (control group) or MSU (+ MSU group). The right panels denote the enlarged ankle joint. B Time courses showing the percent increase in ankle diameter of control and MSU group mice. BL: basal level. **p < 0.01 vs. control group. C Representative photos of pathological sections of ankle joint synovium from control and MSU group mice. The scale bar indicates 20 μm. D Summary of the number of infiltrated cells per observation field. **p < 0.01 vs. control group. E Experimental protocol illustrating time points for model establishment, EA/sham EA interventions and mechanical/thermal pain measurements. F 50% PWT changes of control, MSU, MSU + EA and MSU + sham EA groups. **p < 0.01 vs. control group. ^##p < 0.01 vs. MSU + sham EA. G Normalized AUC analysis of curves shown in panel F. The value from the control group was taken as 100%, and other groups were normalized thereafter. H Time course showing PWL changes of 4 groups. **p < 0.01 vs. control group. ^##p < 0.01 vs. MSU + sham EA. I Normalized AUC analysis of the data in panel H. n = 5–8 mice/group. **p < 0.01, NS no significance