Abstract
Dementia affects millions of elderly worldwide causing remarkable costs to society, but effective treatment is still lacking. Acupuncture is one of the complementary therapies that has been applied to cognitive deficits such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular cognitive impairment (VCI), while the underlying mechanisms of its therapeutic efficiency remain elusive. Neuroplasticity is defined as the ability of the nervous system to adapt to internal and external environmental changes, which may support some data to clarify mechanisms how acupuncture improves cognitive impairments. This review summarizes the up-to-date and comprehensive information on the effectiveness of acupuncture treatment on neurogenesis and gliogenesis, synaptic plasticity, related regulatory factors, and signaling pathways, as well as brain network connectivity, to lay ground for fully elucidating the potential mechanism of acupuncture on the regulation of neuroplasticity and promoting its clinical application as a complementary therapy for AD and VCI.
Highlights
As the population ages, the prevalence of dementia is increasing worldwide with an annual incidence of nearly 10 million [1], which leads to threats and challenges to global health and wellbeing
Dementia is characterized as a syndrome with myriad and complex causes, including primary neurologic, neuropsychiatric, and medical conditions and genetic and environmental factors [2, 3]
This review is aimed at laying the ground for elucidating the potential mechanism of acupuncture on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) to promote its clinical application as a complementary treatment
Summary
The prevalence of dementia is increasing worldwide with an annual incidence of nearly 10 million [1], which leads to threats and challenges to global health and wellbeing. Neurodegenerative dementias are most common [2], among which Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is believed to be the leading cause of dementia, and vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) is the second utmost cause [4, 5]. Effective therapeutics remain limited and even absent to date [4, 5]. Acupuncture, as one of complementary therapies for AD and VCI, is gradually applied to alleviate suffering, aggressively treating contributing symptoms and improving overall quality of life [6,7,8,9,10].
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