Journal
JOURNAL OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
Volume 33, Issue 6, Pages 757-760Publisher
JOURNAL TRADITIONAL CHINESE MED
DOI: 10.1016/S0254-6272(14)60008-X
Keywords
Capillaries; Perfusion; Acupuncture therapy; Arrival of Qi; Point LI 4 (Hegu); Dysmenorrhea; Manifest anxiety scale; Laser speckle blood flow scanning; Vasomotor amplitude
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation [81072760]
- Sino-Austrian Science and Technology Collaboration Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China [ZZ04007]
- Foundation for Excellent Returnees of Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People's Republic of China
- Research on Specificity of Vasomotor Micrangium in Acupoints Transmitted along Meridians [National Program on Key Basic Research Project (973 Program) [2012CB518502]
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OBJECTIVE: To observe capillary blood flow at acupoints during acupuncture treatment of primary dysmenorrhea and gain new insights into its analgesic mechanism. METHODS: Patients with primary dysmenorrhea were enrolled and randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Subjects' symptoms were differentiated into various Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) syndromes and treated for 10 sessions with puncturing acupuncture or self-pressing right-hand Hegu (LI 4), adding other acupoints based on syndrome. Laser speckle was used to compare the change in the vasomotor amplitude and perfusion of the capillaries in Hegu (LI 4) before and during the treatment. Each subject was required to finish the period pain symptoms observation form, verbal rating scales, numerical rating scale, pain rating index, face rating scale, Zung self-rating depression scale, Zung self-rating anxiety scale, and numerical rating scale before and after treatments. RESULTS: After 10 sessions, the symptom scores, pain index (PI), and visual analog scale (VAS) decreased significantly in treatment group. The volume of blood flow in Hegu (LI 4) declined slightly. No significant evidence supported that needling caused capillary contraction, but the capillary vasomotor amplitude at Hegu (LI 4) increased remarkably. CONCLUSION: Acupuncture can increase the capillary blood flow, thus promoting the flow of Qi and blood in terms of TCM theory, which facilitates pain relief. (C) 2013 JTCM. All rights reserved.
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