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Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies

Acupuncture is a nonpharmacological intervention that can be useful in the clinical management of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially in situations with a lack of medical resources, including large-scale PTSD events such as disasters. Some clinical studies have reported the clinical eff...

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Autores principales: Kwon, Chan-Young, Lee, Boram, Kim, Sang-Ho
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8068330/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33917977
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm10081575
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author Kwon, Chan-Young
Lee, Boram
Kim, Sang-Ho
author_facet Kwon, Chan-Young
Lee, Boram
Kim, Sang-Ho
author_sort Kwon, Chan-Young
collection PubMed
description Acupuncture is a nonpharmacological intervention that can be useful in the clinical management of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially in situations with a lack of medical resources, including large-scale PTSD events such as disasters. Some clinical studies have reported the clinical effect of acupuncture in improving PTSD symptoms, but the underlying therapeutic mechanism has yet to be explored. Therefore, this review summarized the underlying therapeutic mechanisms of acupuncture in animal PTSD models. A comprehensive search was conducted in 14 electronic databases, and two independent researchers performed study selection, data extraction, and the methodological quality assessment. Twenty-four relevant studies were included in this review and summarized according to the proposed main mechanisms. In behavioral evaluation, acupuncture, including manual acupuncture and electro-acupuncture, reduced anxiety and fear responses and weakened fear conditioning, improved sleep architecture, reduced depressive symptoms, and alleviated disturbance of spatial learning and memory of PTSD animal models. The therapeutic mechanisms of acupuncture proposed in the included studies could be classified into two categories: (1) regulation of stress responses in the neuroendocrine system and (2) promotion of neuroprotection, neurogenesis, and synaptic plasticity in several brain areas. However, the methodological quality of the included animal studies was not high enough to produce robust evidence. In addition, mechanistic studies on specific aspects of acupuncture that may affect PTSD, including expectancy effects, in human PTSD subjects are also needed.
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spelling pubmed-80683302021-04-25 Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies Kwon, Chan-Young Lee, Boram Kim, Sang-Ho J Clin Med Review Acupuncture is a nonpharmacological intervention that can be useful in the clinical management of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially in situations with a lack of medical resources, including large-scale PTSD events such as disasters. Some clinical studies have reported the clinical effect of acupuncture in improving PTSD symptoms, but the underlying therapeutic mechanism has yet to be explored. Therefore, this review summarized the underlying therapeutic mechanisms of acupuncture in animal PTSD models. A comprehensive search was conducted in 14 electronic databases, and two independent researchers performed study selection, data extraction, and the methodological quality assessment. Twenty-four relevant studies were included in this review and summarized according to the proposed main mechanisms. In behavioral evaluation, acupuncture, including manual acupuncture and electro-acupuncture, reduced anxiety and fear responses and weakened fear conditioning, improved sleep architecture, reduced depressive symptoms, and alleviated disturbance of spatial learning and memory of PTSD animal models. The therapeutic mechanisms of acupuncture proposed in the included studies could be classified into two categories: (1) regulation of stress responses in the neuroendocrine system and (2) promotion of neuroprotection, neurogenesis, and synaptic plasticity in several brain areas. However, the methodological quality of the included animal studies was not high enough to produce robust evidence. In addition, mechanistic studies on specific aspects of acupuncture that may affect PTSD, including expectancy effects, in human PTSD subjects are also needed. MDPI 2021-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8068330/ /pubmed/33917977 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm10081575 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Kwon, Chan-Young
Lee, Boram
Kim, Sang-Ho
Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies
title Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies
title_full Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies
title_fullStr Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies
title_full_unstemmed Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies
title_short Efficacy and Underlying Mechanism of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies
title_sort efficacy and underlying mechanism of acupuncture in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review of animal studies
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8068330/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33917977
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm10081575
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