Background: Impairment of motor function and activities daily living is very common in post-stroke patients. Acupuncture has been used stroke for a long time. Although growing evidence supports the beneficial effects acupuncture, there still no clear conclusion on optimal intervention time-point acupuncture stroke. Thus, we tried to assess efficacy safety dissimilar time-points by network meta-...

Methods Adult patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma were randomised to receive either real or sham acupuncture for 3 days a week for 6 weeks, each session on the same day but prior to scheduled radiation treatment. The real acupuncture group had needles inserted to standard recommended depths or achievement of de qi. The following points were included: body points CV24, LU7 and KI6; ear points...

Objectives. To demonstrate the use of acupuncture in the lower limbs to treat myofascial pain of the upper trapezius muscles via a remote effect. Methods. Five adults with latent myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) of bilateral upper trapezius muscles received acupuncture at Weizhong (UB40) and Yanglingquan (GB34) points in the lower limbs. Modified acupuncture was applied at these points on a ra...

BACKGROUND Acupuncture is a popular complementary and alternative treatment for chronic back pain. Recent European trials suggest similar short-term benefits from real and sham acupuncture needling. This trial addresses the importance of needle placement and skin penetration in eliciting acupuncture effects for patients with chronic low back pain. METHODS A total of 638 adults with chronic me...

Acupuncture has been used for millennia to treat pain, although its efficacy and duration of action is limited. Acupuncture also has brief (1-2 h) antinociceptive effects in mice and these effects are dependent on localized adenosine A₁ receptor (A₁R) activation. Intriguingly, adenosine 5'-monophosphate (AMP) is basally elevated near acupuncture points. This finding suggested that it might be p...

In a randomized controlled trial plus a nonrandomized cohort, the authors investigated the effectiveness and costs of acupuncture in addition to routine care in the treatment of chronic low back pain and assessed whether the effects of acupuncture differed in randomized and nonrandomized patients. In 2001, German patients with chronic low back pain were allocated to an acupuncture group or a no...

In order to better understand the therapeutic effectiveness of acupuncture, questions about the means by which it operates need to be addressed. This article provides an overview of the neural, humoral and biomagnetic mechanisms that may contribute to the production of acupuncture analgesia. The concordance of some acupuncture points and trigger points is noted. Possible modulatory areas within...

BACKGROUND Treatment of patients according to individual pattern diagnoses is an important feature of acupuncture rooted in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Little is known about the reliability of TCM pattern diagnoses. OBJECTIVE To examine in a cross-sectional study the inter-rater reliability of TCM diagnoses and acupuncture point selection. METHODS 30 infertile and 24 previously preg...

Saam acupuncture is one of the original therapeutic modalities representing traditional Korean medicine. It was originally described in a manuscript that is estimated to be published at some point between 1644 and 1742, in the middle of the Cho Sun dynasty, by a Korean Buddhist monk whose name is unknown. The principle of combining five shu points is based on the theory of Nan-jing. The treatme...

According to conventional wisdom within the acupuncture community, acupuncture points and meridians are special conduits for electrical signals. This view gained popularity after anecdotal reports and clinical studies asserted that these anatomical structures are characterized by lower electrical impedance compared to adjacent controls. To ascertain whether evidence exists to support or refute ...