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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.

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 ...