The cross-disciplinary integration of acupuncture and modern medicine: an analysis from the perspective of subject categories

Abstract

The cross-disciplinary integration of acupuncture with modern medicine is an important guarantee to maintain its advantages. Based on 13896 acupuncture articles and 404726 references in the Web of Science Core Database, this paper analyzes the cross-disciplinary integration of acupuncture and modern medicine. It was found that the trend of cross-disciplinary integration between acupuncture and modern medicine is more and more obvious. Neurosciences, Anesthesiology, Oncology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Psychiatry, and Gastroenterology & Hepatology are the subjects with the most crossover and integration, accounting for 56% of the total disciplines. At the same time, more studies have begun to use modern medical methods to study the mechanism of acupuncture. Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Pharmacology & Pharmacy, and Medicine, Research & Experimental have been major areas of interdisciplinary collaboration in recent years. China, the United States, and South Korea are the three countries with the largest number of publications. Among them, Chinese scholars pay more attention to the role of acupuncture in the treatment of neurological diseases, Korean scholars pay more attention to drug acupuncture, especially bee venom acupuncture, and American scholars pay more attention to the role of acupuncture in pain management. However, acupuncture has less cross-disciplinary cooperation with heart and cardiovascular system, peripheral vascular disease, and even less with non-medical disciplines. Using modern medical technology and methods to carry out research on the mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion and strengthen the cooperation with informatics, statistics, physics and other disciplines may be an important direction for the modernization of acupuncture.