Abstract
BackgroundPremenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a prevalent gynecological disease and is significantly associated with abnormal neural activity. Acupuncture is an effective treatment on PMS in clinical practice. However, few studies have been performed to investigate whether acupuncture might modulate the abnormal neural activity in patients with PMS. Thereby, the aim of the study was to assess alterations of the brain activity induced by acupuncture stimulation in PMS patients.MethodsTwenty PMS patients were enrolled in this study. All patients received a 6-min resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scan before and after electro-acupuncturing stimulation (EAS) at Sanyinjiao (SP6) acupoint in the late luteal phase of menstrual. Fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) method was applied to examine the EAS-related brain changes in PMS patients.ResultsCompared with pre-EAS at SP6, increased fALFF value in several brain regions induced by SP6, including brainstem, right thalamus, bilateral insula, right paracentral lobule, bilateral cerebellum, meanwhile, decreased fALFF in the left cuneus, right precuneus, left inferior temporal cortex.ConclusionsOur findings provide imaging evidence to support that SP6-related acupuncture stimulation may modulate the neural activity in patients with PMS. This study may partly interpret the neural mechanisms of acupuncture at SP6 which is used to treat PMS patients in clinical.Trial registration: The study was registered on http://www.chictr.org.cn. The Clinical Trial Registration Number is ChiCTR-OPC-15005918, registry in 29/01/2015.
Highlights
According to our previous study [11], the current study further investigated that whether acupuncture stimulation at SP6 could modulate the abnormal spontaneous brain activity using Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with Fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF)
Using fMRI technology combined with fALFF dataprocessing approach, our previous study found aberrant spontaneous brain activity in Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) patients compared with healthy controls, the related results showed that PMS patients had increased fALFF in bilateral
For the decreased fALFF in cuneus in PMS patients elicited by SP6 in our study, we inferred that electro-acupuncturing stimulation (EAS) at SP6 might affect the function of visual network
Summary
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a prevalent gynecological disease and is significantly associated with abnormal neural activity. Few studies have been performed to investigate whether acupuncture might modulate the abnormal neural activity in patients with PMS. Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a common gynecological disease and characterized by the cyclic occurrence of emotional and physical symptoms that consistently recur in a cyclic manner during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle and typically relieve soon after the occurrence of menstruation [1]. Pharmacologic intervention for PMS includes hormone therapy and symptomatic treatment, including progesterone, oryzanol, vitamins, and oral antianxiety antidepressants [3]. Even though it works very well, evidence on the efficacy of sustained progesterone and the side effects of antidepressant and anxiolytics limited further application [4]. Lack of research on the mechanism of acupuncture therapy for PMS in existing researches, so it is necessary to study on which
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