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Research Archive

Welcome to our Chinese medicine and acupuncture research news pages. We add to the content of these pages continuously as more research news comes in. Browse through the complete archive below or use the category links on the right.

Please note that the most twenty recent research archive items are free to view but access to the thousands of items in the archive require a journal subscription.

Expectancy enhances acupuncture's immune benefits

Categories: Immunity, Acupuncture research

Not only does acupuncture enhance immunity, telling subjects that it does so increases the benefit. Sixty healthy volunteers were randomised to receive acupuncture at Quchi L.I.-11 (groups one and two) or relaxation (group three) twice a week for four weeks. Only acupuncture group one and the relaxation group were provided with the additional suggestion that the treatment might strengthen the immu ...

Deqi switches off brain's pain regions

Categories: Miscellaneous, Acupuncture research

Acupuncture that elicits deqi has a deactivating effect on specific areas of the brain associated with pain processing. A UK team has investigated the effect of deqi and acute pain needling sensations on brain fMRI blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals. Seventeen healthy participants received acupuncture at Hegu L.I.-4 while in an MRI scanner. The fMRI measurements were classified into those ...

Acupuncture more than a placebo for pain

Categories: Miscellaneous, Acupuncture research

In order to clarify whether acupuncture is more effective than placebo for pain relief, two British authors have combined evidence gathered from systematic reviews of high-quality RCTs that compared acupuncture with sham acupuncture for chronic pain conditions. Eight systematic reviews with meta-analyses of pooled data were included in their analysis. For short-term outcomes, acupuncture showed si ...

Acupuncture safe, risks negligible

Categories: Acupuncture research

Two prospective surveys conducted among different groups of professionals in the UK, including doctors, physiotherapists and practitioners primarily trained in acupuncture, monitored adverse events to acupuncture over a defined period of time. A total of 652 acupuncturists reported 6733 adverse reactions in 66,229 patients, an adverse event rate of 10.2%. The most common events were tiredness (3%) ...

Acupuncture increases nitric oxide synthesis

Categories: Acupuncture research

Acupuncture significantly increases the concentration of nitric oxide (NO, a key biological signalling molecule involved in vasodilation and neurotransmission) in local body tissues. In a randomised, double-blind, crossover study, 20 volunteers underwent one session each of real and non-invasive sham acupuncture in a single hand and forearm, with a one-week interval between treatments. NO concentr ...

Needle manipulation has cellular consequences

Categories: Acupuncture research

Subtle differences in needle manipulation techniques can affect the cellular response of connective tissue to acupuncture. American researchers subjected subcutaneous tissue samples from mice to varying amounts of bidirectional needle rotation, before examining them by confocal microscopy. Fibroblast cells were observed to respond to bidirectional rotation with morphological changes, which occurre ...

Acupuncture's ant-inflammatory effects

Categories: Acupuncture research

Research has shown that the parasympathetic nervous system, and in particular the vagus nerve, plays an important part in the regulation of the immune system. A new review explains the neuroimmunoendocrine mechanisms that underlie this interaction, emphasising the role of the vagus nerve in an 'inflammatory reflex' which is capable of suppressing inflammation. Since acupuncture and other CAM modal ...

Imaging acupuncture channels

Categories: Acupuncture research

Two different imaging methods have provided evidence for the existence of acupuncture channels. In one Chinese study, the optical transport properties along the Pericardium channel path and a parallel non-channel path one centimetre away from it were measured. Lasers were shone onto volunteers' arms on points at one end of the path and the amount of emitted light was measured at points on the othe ...

Characterisation of deqi

Categories: Acupuncture research

An experimental study has been carried out using fMRI to characterise the nature and cause of the sensations experienced during deqi. Manual acupuncture was performed at Hegu L.I.-4, Zusanli ST-36 and Taichong LIV-3 during fMRI in 42 acupuncture-naive healthy adult volunteers. Non-invasive tactile stimulation was delivered to the acupoints by gentle tapping with a blunt metal filament prior to acu ...

Deep and shallow needling produce similar brain response

Categories: Acupuncture research

Both deep and superficial needling of acupuncture points appear to elicit similar responses in the brain. Volunteers were needled either superficially or deeply at L.I.-4 Hegu, while their brains underwent fMRI scanning, which calculates the activity of brain regions by measuring oxygen uptake by the tissue. The result of both types of needling was that deactivation of brain regions predominated o ...

Acupuncture benefits immunity

Categories: Acupuncture research

Japanese researchers have investigated the effect of acupuncture on the human immune system. They measured CD-positive cell counts and cytokine expression levels in the peripheral blood of fifteen healthy volunteers before and after acupuncture, to determine the activity of T cells, B cells, macrophages and natural killer (NK) cells. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of ...

Self-help advice is integral to acupuncture care

Categories: Acupuncture research

A qualitative study carried out by researchers at the University of York has investigated the role of self-help advice in traditional acupuncture care. Six acupuncturists were interviewed about the treatments they provided within a pragmatic clinical trial of acupuncture for low back pain. Interviews were transcribed and coded and the contents analysed. The investigators found that individualised ...

Defining acupuncture dose

Categories: Acupuncture research

Lack of agreement on the optimal acupuncture treatment for any particular condition makes the negative results of sham controlled trials difficult to interpret and may mean that patients do not receive the best treatment. Researchers from Plymouth's Peninsula Medical School therefore propose the concept of 'dose' of acupuncture needling. They believe that this should include both the stimulus give ...

Infrared radiation spectrum of acupoints

Categories: Acupuncture research

Chinese researchers have compared the infrared radiation spectra of Neiguan P-6 in coronary heart disease (CHD) patients and healthy volunteers, to see if patients' acupoints carry distinctive pathological information. A highly sensitive infrared spectrum detection device was applied to the Neiguan P-6 and to a control non-acupoint on 50 CHD patients and 47 healthy adults. Infrared radiation inten ...

Trigger points = acupuncture points

Categories: Acupuncture research

An analysis of studies published on acupuncture and myofascial pain therapy demonstrates that acupuncture points and trigger points are anatomically and clinically similar in their uses for treatment of pain disorders. This refutes an earlier study by Birch, who claimed that myofascial trigger points could not be conceptually compared to classical acupuncture points. The author of the new study re ...

Acupuncture and electrodermal activity

Categories: Acupuncture research

An Australian group has proposed electrodermal activity (EDA) as a possible physiological marker for acupuncture. A group of 60 healthy female volunteers were randomly assigned to an experimental group (acupuncture) or a control group (no acupuncture). The experimental group received three acupuncture sessions consisting of unilateral manual stimulation of acupuncture points Lieque LU-7 and Zhaoha ...

Acupuncture causes pupillary constriction

Categories: Acupuncture research

Japanese researchers have investigated whether acupuncture stimulation affects autonomic nerve function by measuring pupil diameters with electronic pupillography. Experiment 1 examined responses before, during and after acupuncture in 12 healthy male volunteers. Experiment 2 compared acupuncture and a no-acupuncture control in a two period, repeated measurement crossover design, in nine healthy m ...

Acupuncture and the brain

Categories: Acupuncture research

In an American study, fifteen healthy subjects were evaluated with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to map the location and timing of brain activity during low-frequency electroacupuncture (EA) and non-penetrating sham acupuncture (SA) using a metal filament at Neiguan P-6. Both EA and SA evoked brain responses in the contralateral primary somatosensory (SI) cortex. However, initial responses for EA p ...

Your brain on acupuncture

Categories: Acupuncture research

A US study used fMRI to analyse the effects on the brain of manual acupuncture stimulation at Erjian L.I.-2, a point commonly used to treat xerostomia (dry mouth due to lack of saliva). Twenty healthy volunteers received true and sham acupuncture in random order while undergoing fMRI imaging. Saliva production was also measured. They found that true acupuncture was associated with bilateral activa ...

Acupuncture changes resting brain activity

Categories: Acupuncture research

Studies using fMRI to look at brain activity before and after acupuncture suggest that it is capable of affecting the resting state of the brain in a sustained manner. Stimulation of Neiguan P-6 was carried out for 150 seconds using either verum manual acupuncture or sham (non-penetrative tapping of the skin using a metal filament passed through a needle guide tube). A resting scan was completed b ...