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eCAM Advance Access published online on August 20, 2009
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/nep104
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© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

A Novel Uni-acupoint Electroacupuncture Stimulation Method for Pain Relief

Chuansen Niu1, Hongwei Hao2, Jun Lu3, Luming Li2, Zhirong Han3 and Ya Tu3

1Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University and 3School of Acupuncture, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China

Electroacupuncture stimulation (EAS) has been demonstrated effective for pain relief and treating other various diseases. However, the conventional way of EAS, the bi-acupoint method, is not suitable for basis study of acupoint specificity. Moreover, its operations are inconvenient and difficult to be persevered, especially for long-term, continuous and even imperative treatments. These disadvantages motivate designs of new EAS methods. We present a novel uni-acupoint electrical stimulation method, which is applied at a single acupoint and quite meets the needs of basis study and simpler clinical application. Its pain relief effect has been evaluated by animal tests of Wistar rats. During the experiments, rats were given 30 min 2/100 Hz uni- and bi-acupoint EAS and their nociceptive thresholds before and after EAS were attained by hot-plate test. The analgesic effect was defined as the change of nociceptive threshold and used to evaluate the effectiveness of uni-acupoint EAS for pain relief. The hot-plate test results indicated that analgesic effect of uni-acupoint group was significantly higher than that of the control group and there was no significant difference of analgesic effects between uni- and bi- acupoint EAS. The results suggested that uni-acupoint method was an effective EAS method and had comparable pain relief effect with bi-acupoint method.

Keywords: acupoint specificity – analgesic effect – bi-acupoint – nociceptive threshold – uni-acupoint

For reprints and all correspondence: Luming Li, PhD, Director of Institute of Man-Machine and Environmental Engineering, School of Aerospace, Room 803, Main Building, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Tel: +86-10-62785716; Fax: +86-10-62785716; E-mail: lilm{at}tsinghua.edu.cn

Received October 22, 2008; accepted July 17, 2009


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