This paper reviews trends in research related to Korean pharmacopuncture therapy. Specifically, basic and clinical research in pharmacopuncture within the last decade is summarized by introducing categorical variables for classification. These variables are also analyzed for association. This literature review is based on articles published from February 1997 to December 2008 in a Korean journal, the Journal of the Korean Institute of Herbal Acupuncture, which was renamed the Journal of the Korean Pharmacopuncture Institute in 2007. Among the total of 379 papers published in the journal during this period, 164 papers were selected for their direct relevance to pharmacopuncture research and were categorized according to three variables: medicinal materials, acupuncture points and disease. The most frequently studied medicinal materials were bee-venom pharmacopuncture (42%), followed by meridian-field pharmacopuncture (24%), single-compound pharmacopuncture (24%), and eight-principle pharmacopuncture (10%). The frequency distributions of the acupuncture points and meridians for the injection of medicinal materials are presented. The most frequently used meridian and acupuncture point was the Bladder meridian and ST36, respectively. Contingency tables are also displayed to analyze the relationship between the categorized variables. Chi-squared analysis showed a significant association between the type of pharmacopuncture and disease. The trend in research reports on Korean pharmacopuncture therapy was reviewed and analyzed using a descriptive statistical approach to evaluate the therapeutic value of this technique for future research.
The goal of this research was to position all the standardized 361 acupuncture points on the entire human body based on a 3-dimensional (3D) virtual body. Digital data from a healthy Korean male with a normal body shape were obtained in the form of cross-sectional images generated by X-ray computed tomography (CT), and the 3D models for the bones and the skin's surface were created through the image-processing steps. The reference points or the landmarks were positioned based on the standard descriptions of the acupoints, and the formulae for the proportionalities between the acupoints and the reference points were presented. About 37% of the 361 standardized acupoints were automatically linked with the reference points, the reference points accounted for 11% of the 361 acupoints, and the remaining acupoints (52%) were positioned point-by-point by using the OpenGL 3D graphics libraries. Based on the projective 2D descriptions of the standard acupuncture points, the volumetric 3D acupoint model was developed; it was extracted from the X-ray CT images. This modality for positioning acupoints may modernize acupuncture research and enable acupuncture treatments to be more personalized.
According to Bonghan Kim's theory of anatomical reality for acupuncture meridians, DNA microgranules known as Sanals are key functional components in the primo vascular system (formerly the Bonghan system). To investigate this issue, we developed a new system, an incubator bound to a phase-contrast microscope, in which we cultivated and then observed for 10 hours microgranules taken from 3-day-old chick embryos and from blastoderms of fertilized chicken eggs. With this system, we found that, over time, the microgranules grew in circular patterns to become cell-like structures. In the embryo specimens, we found two distinctive microgranule growths, which developed into cell-like structures over 10 hours. In the first case, a microgranule of about 1.0 μm in size developed into a 3.3-μm-sized cell-like structure, with a pattern of concentric circles. The growth rate of the diameter of the first microgranule was, on average, 0.23 μm/hour. In the second case, a 2.5-μm-sized microgranule developed into a 5.4-μm-sized cell-like structure, which also exhibited a pattern of concentric circles. The average growth rate of the diameter of the second microgranule was 0.31 μm/hour. In the blastoderm specimens from the fertilized chicken egg, we also found three distinctive concentric growths. Interestingly, one of the three blastoderm microgranules grew very quickly, from about 2.5 μm in size to about 5.5 μm in size during 5 minutes of incubation. This was followed by steady growth to about 7.0 μm in size during the next 10 hours of incubation. In the final step of our investigation, we confirmed that the cell-like structures that had grown from the microgranules stained by acridine orange had DNA signals. We believe that the data obtained with our experimental method provide a clue that a mitosis-free alternative pathway for cell formation may, indeed, exist. We also suggest that this new function of microgranules (Sanals) might be related with the acupuncture meridian called the primo vascular system.
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