BACKGROUND Chronic shoulder pain (CSP) is the third most common type of musculoskeletal pain. It has a major impact on health-related quality of life. In Chinese medicine, CSP is considered one of the conditions most amenable to treatment with acupuncture. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of local acupoints in combination with distal acupoints in pain relief and shoulder fu...

Acupuncture has been historically practiced to treat medical disorders by mechanically stimulating specific acupoints. Despite its well-documented efficacy, its biological basis largely remains elusive. Recent studies suggested that cell apoptosis and autophagy might play key roles in acupuncture therapy. Therefore, we searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infras...

Two consecutive studies were undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture as an antiemetic used in addition to premedication with opioids in patients undergoing minor gynaecological operations. In the first study 25 of the 50 patients underwent acupuncture immediately after premedication with 100 mg meptazinol, the rest receiving the drug alone, and in the second 75 patients were all...

This short review article presents a current overview of existing publications and scientific results regarding liquid (ear) acupuncture. The injection of liquids into defined acupuncture points of the ear is not a method commonly used in the Western world. The term liquid acupuncture has different definitions, which makes understanding each definition and differentiating one from the other dif...

When studying the neural responses to acupuncture with a block-designed paradigm, its temporal dynamics predicted by the general linear model (GLM) conforms to typical "on-off" variations during a limited period of the experiment manipulation. Despite a lack of direct evidence associating its psychophysiological response, numerous clinical reports suggest that acupuncture can provide pain relie...

This study compared the effects of high intensity, low frequency transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation of auricular, somatic, and combined auricular and somatic acupuncture points on experimental pain threshold measured at the wrist. Sixty-seven healthy adults, aged 18 to 39 years, were assigned randomly to one of four groups: 1) the Auricular Group (n = 17) received TENS to auricular acu...

UNLABELLED The treatment of tinnitus is still a challenge. Acupuncture is recommended for the relief of tinnitus in traditional Chinese Medicine, although scientific evidence is lacking. AIM The aim of this study was to assess the effect of acupuncture on the cochlear function in patients with tinnitus by analyzing otoacoustic emissions. METHODS Thirty eight patients with tinnitus were incl...

"One Acupuncture", like "One Medicine", has the potential to improve research quality and clinical outcomes. However, while human acupuncture point locations have remained largely consistent over time, the veterinary versions remain imprecise and variable. Establishing anatomical criteria for veterinary acupuncture atlases in keeping with the human template will create congruence across species...

OBJECTIVE This study evaluates the thermographic changes associated with moxa burner moxibustion at the SP6 acupuncture point to establish an appropriate, safe distance of efficacy for moxibustion. METHODS Baseline temperature changes using a moxa burner were obtained for a paper substrate at various distances and times, and the tested with volunteers in a pilot study. A single-group trial wa...

UNLABELLED Tan C-W, Christie L, St-Georges V, Telford N. Discrimination of real and sham acupuncture needles using the Park sham device: a preliminary study. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the blinding effectiveness of the Park sham acupuncture device using participants' ability to discriminate between the real and sham acupuncture needles. DESIGN The design was a yes-no experiment. Judgments were m...