Research progress on the mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion in treatment of endometriosis

Abstract

The clinical and experimental researches of acupuncture and moxibustion on endometriosis during past 15 years were collected. The research progress underling the mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion on endometriosis was summarized. By taken Chinese characters, i.e. "acupuncture-moxibustion" and "endometriosis" as well as the English words, i.e. "acupuncture therapy" and "endometriosis" as the searching words, the relevant articles were retrieved from Pubmed, Embase, Chinese China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Database, Chongqing VIP and the China Biology Medicine Disc etc. The retrieval time was from January 2003 to October 2018. As a result, 41 articles of clinical studies and 18 articles of animal experiments were screened. Of them, 20 articles (including 18 articles of animal experiments and 2 articles of clinical trial) are related to the mechanism underling acupuncture and moxibustion on endometriosis. In term of the impacts on growth factors, enzymes and enzyme inhibitors, the mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion was explored on the analgesia for endometriosis, the inhibition of ectopic tissue angiogenesis and invasive adhesion, as well as the regulation of immune function and endocrine. Moreover, the limitation and prospect on the current researches were proposed so as to provide the more reliable evidence for clinical treatment of endometriosis with acupuncture and moxibustion.