Transorbital Doppler Assessment Of Blood Flow Velocity During Stimulation Of Acupoints Yuyao And Zanzhu

摘要

We studied the effects of acupuncture on cerebral blood flow in 14 healthy volunteers (mean age 52.3 + 15.7 years, 11 females and 3 males) and 22 patients (mean age 70.6 + 7.3 years, 12 females and 10 males) with macular degeneration using continuous transorbital Doppler sonography. Acupuncture consisted of manual manipulation of the acupoints Yuyao and Zanzhu for periods of 20 seconds. Mean blood flow velocity in the supratrochlear artery increased significantly (p = 0.03 and 0.05, respectively) in both groups. Mean blood flow velocity in the ophthalmic artery increased also markedly during and after acupuncture. These results indicate once again that the brain plays a key intermediate role in acupuncture. Introduction Transcranial (transorbital) Doppler ultrasonography (TCD) is a noninvasive modality to assess blood flow velocity of cerebral arteries. Using new probe holder constructions, blood flow patterns in various extracerebral and intracerebral arteries can be recorded simultaneously and continuously (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13). Acupuncture, a method based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), has been used for more than thousands of years. Many empirical data have been collected on acupuncture, but few effects have been measured objectively (15). Early, intriguing results obtained by us (1-13) and other groups (13) indicate that effects of acupuncture can be measured in specific regions in the brain.The goal of the present study was to investigate specific effects of manual stimulation of two acupoints (Yuyao and Zanzhu) on mean blood flow velocity (vm) in the supratrochlear (STA) and ophthalmic (OA) arteries simultaneously. Subjects and Methods ParticipantsThe normal volunteers comprised 11 females and 3 males, 29 - 79 (mean 52.3 ± 15.7 SD years) years of age. None of the volunteers had acitive medical problems or were taking medications. The studies were performed in a dark, quiet biomedical engineering laboratory with the subjects’ eyes kept closed. The patient group comprised 12 females and 10 males 55 - 83 (mean 70.6 ± 7.3 SD) years of age with age-related macular degeneration (14,16,17). Thirteen patients had atrophic or dry macular degeneration and nine patients had the exudative form of the disease.