The Status of the Acupuncture Mechanism Study Based on PET/PET-CT Technique: Design and Quality Control

Zhaoxuan He; Likai Hou; Ruirui Sun; Tao Yin; Peihong Ma; Li Chen; Shirui Cheng; Xiaoyan Liu; Xiaojuan Hong; Jian Hou; Fang Zeng

doi:10.1155/2019/9062924

The Status of the Acupuncture Mechanism Study Based on PET/PET-CT Technique: Design and Quality Control

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2019 Nov 29:2019:9062924. doi: 10.1155/2019/9062924. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Zhaoxuan He^{1

2}, Likai Hou^{1

2}, Ruirui Sun^{1

2}, Tao Yin^{1

2}, Peihong Ma^{1

2}, Li Chen^{1

2}, Shirui Cheng^{1

2}, Xiaoyan Liu^{1

2}, Xiaojuan Hong^{1

2}, Jian Hou^{2

3}, Fang Zeng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Acupuncture and Tuina School/The 3rd Teaching Hospital, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
² Acupuncture & Brain Science Research Center, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
³ Clinical Medicine College/Teaching Hospital, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

Abstract

PET/PET-CT is an important technique to investigate the central mechanism of acupuncture in vivo. This article collected original research papers with keywords of "Acupuncture," "PET," "PET/CT," and "Positron emission tomography" in PubMed and CNKI databases from January 2003 to December 2018. As a result, a total of 43 articles were included. Based on the literature analyses, we found that (1) reasonable arrangement of the operation process and the choice of appropriate acupuncture intervention time is conducive to a better interpretation of acupuncture-PET/PET-CT mechanism and (2) the selection of participants, sample size, acupuncture intervention, and experimental conditions would affect study results. Therefore, effective quality control is an important way to ensure the repeatability of research results.

Publication types

Review