Neuronal Specificity of Acupuncture in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients: A Functional MRI Study.

Neuronal Specificity of Acupuncture in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients: A Functional MRI Study. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2018;2018:7619197 Authors: Shan Y, Wang JJ, Wang ZQ, Zhao ZL, Zhang M, Xu JY, Han Y, Li KC, Lu J Abstract Although acupuncture is considered to be effective and safe for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), the mechanism underlying its therapeutic effect is still unknown. Most studies clarifying the neuronal pathway produced by acupuncture were still applied to healthy subjects with limited single acupuncture point stimulation, which was inconsistency with clinical practice. Thus, in our present study, we investigate the differences between brain activity changes in AD and MCI patients caused by multi-acupuncture point Siguan (four gates), in order to provide visualized evidence for neuronal specificity of clinical acupuncture. Forty-nine subjects were recruited, including 21 AD patients, 14 MCI patients, and 14 healthy controls (HC). AD and MCI patients were randomly divided into two groups, respectively: real acupuncture point group (14 AD and 8 MCI) and sham acupuncture point group (7 AD and 6 MCI). We adopted a 16-minute, single-block, experimental design for acquiring functional MRI images. We found, in AD and MCI patients, Siguan (four gates) elicited extensive activations and deactivations in cognitive-related areas, visual-related areas, the sen...
Source: Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine - Category: Complementary Medicine Tags: Evid Based Complement Alternat Med Source Type: research