BackgroundDuring their reproductive years about 10% of women experience some kind of symptoms before menstruation (PMS) in a degree that affects their quality of life (QOL). Acupuncture and herbal medicine has been a recent favorable therapeutic approach. Thus we aimed to review the effects of acupuncture and herbal medicine in the past decade as a preceding research in order to further investigate the most effective Korean Medicine treatment for PMS/PMDD.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted using electronic databases on studies published between 2002 and 2012. Our review included randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) of acupuncture and herbal medicine for PMS/PMDD. Interventions include acupuncture or herbal medicine. Clinical information including statistical tests was extracted from the articles and summarized in tabular form or in the text. Study outcomes were presented as the rate of improvement (%) and/or end-of-treatment scores.ResultsThe search yielded 19 studies. In screening the RCTs, 8 studies in acupuncture and 11 studies in herbal medicine that matched the criteria were identified. Different acupuncture techniques including traditional acupuncture, hand acupuncture and moxibustion, and traditional acupuncture technique with auricular points, have been selected for analysis. In herbal medicine, studies on Vitex Agnus castus, Hypericum perforatum, Xiao yao san, Elsholtzia splendens, Cirsium japonicum, and Gingko biloba L. were identified. Experimental groups with Acupuncture and herbal medicine treatment (all herbal medicine except Cirsium japonicum) had significantly improved results regarding PMS/PMDD.ConclusionsLimited evidence supports the efficacy of alternative medicinal interventions such as acupuncture and herbal medicine in controlling premenstrual syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Acupuncture and herbal medicine treatments for premenstrual syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder showed a 50% or better reduction of symptoms compared to the initial state. In both acupuncture and herbal medical interventions, there have been no serious adverse events reported, proving the safety of the interventions while most of the interventions provided over 50% relief of symptoms associated with PMS/PMDD. Stricter diagnostic criteria may have excluded many participants from some studies. Also, depending on the severity of symptoms, the rate of improvement in the outcomes of the studies may have greatly differed.
This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of pharmacopuncture in the treatment of acute peripheral facial paralysis (APFP) through a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to assess the clinical evidence for pharmacopuncture as a treatment for PFP. Methods: Literature was searched using databases. The search terms used were "pharmacopuncture," "sweet BV," "apipuncture," "apitoxin," "injection acupuncture," and "herbal acupuncture" in English and "bongchim," "bongyakchim," and "yakchim" in Korean. The RevMan 5.2 program was used for meta-analysis. Results: In all, 1902 studies were screened and the full texts of 219 articles were reviewed. Of these, nine studies were included in the systematic review and nine studies were included in the meta-analysis. Treatments utilizing bee venom, sweet bee venom (SBV), Soyeom, Calculus Bovis • Fel Ursi • Moschus (BUM), Hominis Placenta, and Suseunghwagang (SSHG) were observed in nine RCTs. In the forest plot, the diamond favors the PA treatment against the control treatment. (95% CI: 0.34 [0.08, 0.60], Z = 2.57, P = 0.01), which Our meta-analysis in RevMan 5.2 confirmed the significant efficacy of PA in treating APFP. Conclusion: Our systematic review and meta-analysis suggest that treatments using Soyeom, bee venom, and BUM are effective in APFP and they reduce the duration of postauricular pain occurring at the acute stage of APFP. However, due to small effect size, further investigation is needed.
Objectives : Type analysis and comparison among three decades are done on papers published in The Journal of Korean Acupuncture and Moxibustion from the inaugural issue to the last issue of 2013, Vol 30(5). Methods : Journal search engine at 'theacpuncture' and 'kamms' were used. Issues not searched in these two search engines were not included in the analysis. Results : The number of journals in the thirty years of the journal history included 2081 articles.For type analysis of the articles, experiment articles outnumbered other types with 743 papers followed by 564 review articles, 601 clinical articles, and 156 case articles. In comparison among three decades, recent ten years outnumbered the other types with 1060 papers followed by 853 papers in the middle decade and 168 papers at the initial decade. Conclusion : In the thirty years of the journal history, the research has become more actively done in the recent decade.
Background and objectives : Social phobia is a nervous anxiety characterized by one or more constant fear in social activity or specific situation which causes serious damage to individual's social functions leading to chronic functional impairment when it is untreated. The objective of this study is to report a new finding of a possible subtype of social phobia according to a case survey and study of sufferers found via online support group. Methods : A single case review using survey and interview on patient was employed. Following a no-treatment baseline period for examination and interview, biweekly acupuncture treatment with interview for in-depth examination was delivered for 6months. Also, for in-depth investigation of peripheral vision phobia, survey questionnaire was done by the members of a Korean support group on on-line social group forum. Result : A new type of social phobia which has not yet been reported nor mentioned in any journals, namely called 'peripheral vision phobia' has been identified. Biweekly acupuncture treatment reached a comfort state of mental status on one case of patient with social phobia. Limitation : Due to the shift of environment on patient's part, the termination of the school session at where the phobia occur the most, the reoccurrence of the phobia is yet to be examined. Also, the generalization of the new type of phobia as a subtype only by reviewing one case alone with survey interview of on-line social group has limitation. Conclusion : The result of the case review suggests that 'peripheral vision phobia' is strictly concentrated on malfunctioning of peripheral vision without functional or organic hindrance of pupils or of any parts of eyes including eye muscles due to peripheral vision phobia. PVP is similar to social phobia and it may be a subtype of social phobia, however, since etiology, diagnosis, medical treatment methods are under researched, investigation is yet to be done.
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