Increased pain threshold following electroacupuncture: analgesia is induced mainly in meridian acupuncture points

Abstract

The pain threshold increased significantly in all tested sites after electroacupuncture but the analgesic effect was predominant in those points lying along the acupuncture meridians.

The Effect of Acupuncture on Alpha-Motoneuron Excitability

“…Interestingly, the rise in pain threshold appeared to be more prominent in acupuncture points tested along the acupuncture meridian than in non-acupuncture points further away from the meridian (Farber, Tachibana, & Campiglia, 1997).…”

Effects of Acupuncture on Sensory Perception: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…In six out of eleven studies (54.5%), threshold changes were more pronounced after ipsi-than after contralateral needling [25,34,67,[100][101][102]. In one high quality study bilateral needle placement was superior to unilateral needling [65], and results of three studies suggest that needle stimulation at LI 4 is more effective in changing pain thresholds than needling at other acupuncture points [39,53,65]. Four studies (20%) found significant effects of acupuncture on sensory perception independent of the needle location [28,60,66,75,95], and in two studies no change of any sensory threshold was observed [103,104].…”

“…All showed a statistically significant elevation of the PPT through acupuncture. Two studies assessed the effect of EA only [28,39], three studies solely the effect of MA [65,95,98], and two the effect of both, MA and EA . Either a manual algometer [39,65,95,100] according to Fischer et al [107] or an electronic algometer [28,76,98] was used as measuring tool (tip size 1 cm 2 ).…”

“…Twenty nine out of the 85 included studies (34.1%) were performed with a group size of 20 subjects or more [22, 23, 31, 37, 41, 48-50, 52, 56, 57, 62, 64, 65, 68, 74, 76, 81-84, 86-89, 93, 96, 98, 100], and ten studies (11.8%) did not include a control group [23,32,36,39,69,75,81,82,90,101] (table 4).…”

“…Either a manual algometer [39,65,95,100] according to Fischer et al [107] or an electronic algometer [28,76,98] was used as measuring tool (tip size 1 cm 2 ). Changes ranged from 59 to 392 kPa [28,39,76,98,100] or from 10% to 27%, respectively [65,95].…”