Electro-acupuncture with low-frequency stimulation
improved cognitive function in middle-aged women and men, reflected by the
changes in P300 index. A report of pilot of randomized controlled clinical
studies was published in journal of BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Aging is related to an increase in senile disorders such
as Alzheimer’s disease. It has been recently reported that the number of
patients with Alzheimer’s dementia is expected to reach 13.5 million by 2050 in
the United States alone and will become a major problem worldwide over time.
How to improve cognitive function is crucial to prevent senile-related
conditions. The P300 is an important index that is used in clinical studies to
evaluate reductions in memory and other cognitive functions and has been known
to show decreased amplitude and delayed latency with aging. Acupuncture
stimulation at some specific acupoints was reported to improve cognitive
function and slow down the reduction of memory.
Recently Dr. KH Choi and colleagues conducted a pilot
clinical study with randomised double-blinded controlled setting to evaluate
the effect of low-frequency electro-acupuncture stimulation at BL62 and KI6 on cognitive
function, using P300 index. Fifty-five healthy subjects in their 50s, including
26 males and 29 females were recruited and divided into real acupuncture (n=28)
and sham acupuncture (n=27) groups. In real electro-acupuncture at an average
of 24μA and 2 Hz stimulation at acupoints BL62 and KI6 lasted 30 mins each
session, 12 sessions over one month. Brain activity of each subject was
recorded by event related potentials (ERPs) of electroencephalogram before the
first session and after the last session of acupuncture, then analysed using
P300.
It was found that subjects in the real acupuncture group
showed a tendency toward a decreasing P300 latency and increasing P300
amplitude after all 12 sessions of stimulation. In the women, the amplitude
significantly increased at many perimeters, compared with sham group.
The authors suggested that the results of this study may
serve as a foundation for the treatment of dementia and various brain disorders
due to brain aging and impaired cognition. However, because the results of this
study are limited to middle-aged women, further studies are necessary to determine
the therapeutic effects in different age groups as well as in men and to
discover the neurological mechanisms underlying the positive influence of
low-frequency electrical stimulation on the brain.
Reference
KH Choi et al., Change
in the P300 index–a pilot randomized controlled trial of low-frequency
electrical stimulation of acupuncture points in middle-aged men and women. BMC
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2017) 17:246. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415720/
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