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

作者：Yi Shan, Jingjuan Wang, Zhi­qun Wang, Zhilian Zhao, Mo Zhang, Jianyang Xu, Ying Han, Kuncheng Li, Jie Lu · 发表于：Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1155/2018/7619197 · 被引用次数：47 · 研究领域：Acupuncture Treatment Research Studies、Traditional Chinese Medicine Studies、Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies

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 sensorimotor-related area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Compared with HC, AD and MCI patients showed similar activations in cognitive-related brain areas (inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and rolandic operculum) as well as deactivations in cognitive-related areas, visual-related areas, basal gang...