BACKGROUND We report on the study design and protocol of a randomised controlled trial (Acupuncture in Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis, ACUSAR) that investigates the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR). OBJECTIVE To investigate whether acupuncture is non-inferior or superior to (a) penetrating sham acupuncture and (b) rescue medication in the treatment of S...

BACKGROUND Patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) face increased risk of stroke. Whether acupuncture can help to protect TBI patients from stroke has not previously been studied. METHODS Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database was used to conduct a retrospective cohort study of 7409 TBI patients receiving acupuncture treatment and 29,636 propensity-score-matched TBI patients ...

UNLABELLED Acupuncture is a widely used symptomatic treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence of the effectiveness of acupuncture and acupuncture-like treatments for CTS. Systematic searches were conducted on 11 electronic databases without language restrictions. All randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture as a tr...

Objective. This study aims to give a profile of discomfort and acceptability of acupuncture, including the prevalence and association with demographic and acupuncture-related factors. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Beijing, China. Outpatients of acupuncture and moxibustion departments were recruited using purposive sampling. 925 subjects were interviewed with an anonymous que...

Citation: Nierhaus T, Pach D, Huang W, Long X, Napadow V, Roll S, Liang F, Pleger B, Villringer A and Witt CM (2016) Difficulties Choosing Control Points in Acupuncture Research. Response: Commentary: Differential Cerebral Response, Measured with Both an EEG and fMRI, to Somatosensory Stimulation of a Single Acupuncture Point vs. Two Non-Acupuncture Points. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:404. doi: 10...

Objective: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is common and has a negative impact on recovery. Although many stroke patients in Taiwan have used acupuncture as a supplementary treatment for reducing stroke comorbidities, little research has been done on the use of acupuncture to prevent PSD. Accordingly, our goal is to investigate whether using acupuncture after a stroke can reduce the risk of PSD. M...

BACKGROUND Like any other form of healthcare, acupuncture takes place in a particular context which can enhance or diminish treatment outcomes (i.e. can produce contextual effects). Patients' expectations of acupuncture might be an important component of contextual effects, but we know relatively little about the origins and nature of patients' expectations or wider preconceptions about acupunc...

Acupuncture is infrequently studied in the pediatric oncology population; however, it has immense potential as a complementary cancer care modality. The aim of our analysis was to characterize the patients and utilization of acupuncture therapy among the pediatric oncology population at a tertiary care pediatric hospital. A retrospective analysis of medical records for patients between the ages...

PURPOSE To investigate the different responses to acupuncture in MCI patients and age-matched healthy subjects reflected by the Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) indices. METHODS The experiment was performed at the acupoint KI3 in 12 MCI patients and 12 healthy controls, respectively. A novel non-repeated event-related (NRER) fMRI design paradigm was applied to separately detect neural activities r...

Background Acupuncture is increasingly offered as a treatment for chronic pain, but continued treatment is expensive. Self acupuncture might offer a cost effective alternative. The aim of this project was to investigate the effectiveness and safety of self acupuncture in a pain clinic. Methods A retrospective audit was conducted by postal questionnaire of all patients with chronic pain who were...