Acupuncture
manipulation, which regulates the quality of stimulation, involves frequency,
duration, depth, direction and many other aspects. It has been reported that
different manipulation techniques exert different effect, possible due to
different influence on cellular responders in subcutaneous tissues. For
example, the activities of natural killer cell, T lymphocyte subsets,
activation of many local neuroactive molecules and modulators. However, effect
of acupuncture needle direction and its underlying mechanism are less clear.
Recently, scientists in China conducted a clinical study
to investigate 1). The metabolic mechanism of acupuncture direction using
metabonomic techniques by analysing metabolic profiles of urine samples of
patients with posterior circulation ischemia and healthy subjects; 2). Effect
of different acupuncture direction on therapeutic efficacy. Sixty patients with
posterior circulation ischemia and thirty healthy subjects were recruited for
the study. Acupuncture was performed at acupoint GB20, for 6 min, 3-4 times
each week for a total 14 treatments. Patients were randomly divided into two
groups. Group A: the needle tip was directed toward the contralateral paropia, twirling
with a frequency of 120 times per minute, depth 0.5–0.8 cun. Group B: the
needle tip was directed toward the prominentia laryngea, twirling with a
frequency of 120 times per minute, depth 0.5–0.8 cun. Morning urine samples
were collected from healthy subjects, patients of pretreatment and
posttreatment of group A and B.
The results showed that significant differences in urine
biomarker contents were observed between patients and healthy subjects. After
treatment, the urine biomarker contents of patients of both treatment groups
returned to levels similar to those of the healthy control group. Further,
urine biomarker contents of group A were closer to those of the control group
than the biomarker contents of group B.
The study presented that manipulation of the needle tip
at the GB20) acupoint toward the contralateral paropia adjusted metabolite
levels more readily in patients with posterior circulation ischemia to levels
similar to those healthy subjects. It suggested that different acupuncture needle
direction might play an important role of therapeutic outcome.
Reference
L Ju et al., Metabonomic
study of the effects of different acupuncture directions on therapeutic
efficacy. Journal of Chromatography B, 1009 (2016) 87–95. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26708629
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