OBJECTIVE To study the influence of acupuncture at Waiguan (TE5) on the functional connectivity of the central nervous system of patients with ischemic stroke. METHODS Twenty-four patients with ischemic stroke in the left basal ganglia were randomized based on gender to receive TE5 acupuncture (n = 12) or nonacupoint acupuncture (n = 12). Each group underwent sham acupuncture and then verum a...

Siguan acupoints have been used to treat gastrointestinal symptoms in acupuncture practices for a long time. This study aimed to investigate the effects of Siguan acupuncture on gastrointestinal motility under accelerated conditions using a randomized, sham-acupuncture-controlled, crossover study. Twenty-one healthy male subjects were hospitalized and randomized into either a real acupuncture g...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate a simulated acupuncture technique for use in randomized controlled trials assessing the efficacy of acupuncture for low-back pain. SETTING The clinic of an accredited acupuncture college in Seattle, Washington. SUBJECTS Acupuncture-naïve enrollees of Group Health Cooperative who had visited their primary care provider with a complaint of back pain that persisted for at...

As an alternative and complement to conventional or allopathic medicine, acupuncture has become a firmly established therapy in many countries. Despite this wide acceptance, the question of how acupuncture works, or whether it works at all, remains the subject of lively debate. One problem in the discussion of acupuncture and its possible mechanisms is that acupuncture is not only used for the ...

Acupuncture has been proved to be effective for treatment of diseases, but the underlying mechanisms about acupuncture are still unknown. We design the animal experiment and process the data. We focus on the firing patterns evoked by acupuncture and developed Izhikevich neuronal model to characterize acupuncture signal. It is shown that this minimal model could account for some important experi...

Purpose Community acupuncture is a recent innovation in acupuncture service delivery that provides low-cost treatments in group-based settings. Recent data suggests improved access to acupuncture through the community acupuncture model. However, there is a paucity of research on quality of care provided at community acupuncture clinics. The aim of this study was to assess patients’ perspectives...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to understand whether acupuncture can decrease the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in patients with fibromyalgia. METHODS Using data from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Research Database, we performed a propensity score-matched cohort study to analyze patients with fibromyalgia diagnosed between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2010. Patients w...

On November 8-9, 2007, the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR) hosted an international conference to mark the tenth anniversary of the landmark NIH [National Institutes of Health] Consensus Development Conference on Acupuncture. More than 300 acupuncture researchers, practitioners, students, funding agency personnel, and health policy analysts from 20 countries attended the SAR meeting held ...

Acupuncture is currently gaining popularity as an important modality of alternative and complementary medicine in the western world. Modern neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and magnetoencephalography open a window into the neurobiological foundations of acupuncture. In this review, we have summarized evidence derived from neuro...