Biomarkers of postmenopausal osteoporosis and interventive mechanism of catgut embedding in acupoints

INTRODUCTION: Postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP), which is a common and frequently occurring age-related metabolic bone disease in perimenopausal women, severely affects patients living quality. Modern medicine therapies for PMOP have several problems such as side reactions, low compliance, and high costs. Thus, nonpharmacological modality is urgently needed. Although acupoint thread embedding treatment is widely used in clinical practice, there is no persuasive evidence of its effect on increasing bone mass for PMOP. This experiment aims to investigate the efficacy and safety of acupoint thread embedding on PMOP and elucidate the correlations among brain neural activation, bone mineral density (BMD), and clinical outcomes with magnetic resonance evidence, thus to explore its neural mechanism. METHODS: This parallel designed, exploratory randomized, controlled, assessor-statistician-blinded, positive medicine clinical trial will include 70 participants with PMOP recruited from 2 traditional Chinese Medicine hospitals. These participants will be randomly allocated to a treatment group (Group Embedding) and a control group (Group Medication) in a 1:1 ratio. Participants in the treatment group will receive acupoint thread embedding treatment once 2 weeks in the following predefined acupoints: Shenshu (BL23), Sanyinjiao (SP6), Guanyuan (RN4), Ganshu (BL18), Dazhu (BL11), Xuanzhong (GB39), Zusanli (ST36), and Pishu (BL20). Meanwhile, the participants in the control group will take 0.3 mg Climen tablet orally, 1 tablet/day; every month has a schedule of the 21-day-continuous-taking-medicine period, and 7-day tablet-free period. There is a study period of 3 months and a follow-up period of 1 month for each group. The primary outcomes will be the following therapeutic indexed: Short-Form of McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ), Osteoporosis Symptom Score during the observation period and follow-up period. The secondary outcomes will be Osteoporosis Quality of Life Scale (OQOLS), 16-item Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life in Osteoporosis. In addition, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans and bone density test will be done before and after the observation period to show cranial neuroimaging changes. All the outcomes will be evaluated before and after treatment. The safety of interventions will be assessed at every visit. DISCUSSION: We present study design and rationale to explore the effectiveness and neural mechanism of acupoint thread embedding for PMOP through these outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR-INR-17011491.