Neuronal Specificity of Acupuncture in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients: A Functional MRI Study.

Although acupuncture is considered to be effective and safe for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), the mechanism underlying its therapeutic effect is still unknown. Most studies clarifying the neuronal pathway produced by acupuncture were still applied to healthy subjects with limited single acupuncture point stimulation, which was inconsistency with clinical practice. Thus, in our present study, we investigate the differences between brain activity changes in AD and MCI patients caused by multi-acupuncture point Siguan (four gates), in order to provide visualized evidence for neuronal specificity of clinical acupuncture. Forty-nine subjects were recruited, including 21 AD patients, 14 MCI patients, and 14 healthy controls (HC). AD and MCI patients were randomly divided into two groups, respectively: real acupuncture point group (14 AD and 8 MCI) and sham acupuncture point group (7 AD and 6 MCI). We adopted a 16-minute, single-block, experimental design for acquiring functional MRI images. We found, in AD and MCI patients, Siguan (four gates) elicited extensive activations and deactivations in cognitive-related areas, visual-related areas, the sensorimotor-related area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Compared with HC, AD and MCI patients showed similar activations in cognitive-related brain areas (inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and rolandic operculum) as well as deactivations in cognitive-related areas, visual-related areas, basal ganglia, and cerebellum, which were not found in HC. Compared with sham acupuncture points, real acupuncture points produced more specific brain changes with both activated and deactivated brain activities in AD and MCI. The preliminary results in our study verified the objective evidence for neuronal specificity of acupuncture in AD and MCI patients.

[Combination analysis of new drug discovery with "Xiaohe Silian" method and traditional Chinese medicine clinical pharmacy].

With the kernel of efficacy, "Xiaohe Silian" was a pattern and method for new drug discovery which was constituted with "metabolism-efficacy, toxicity-efficacy, quality-efficacy and structure-efficacy". Its connotation was in keeping with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinical pharmacy. This paper systematically summarized the research method of new drug discovery practice process for TCM. To avoid western drug like in TCM new drug discovery, we carried out combination analysis with TCM clinical pharmacy. The correlation analysis between basic elements of "Xiaohe Silian(n) and TCM clinical pharmacy was studied to guarantee this method could integrate closely with TCM clinic from all angles. Hence, this method aimed to provide a new method for TCM new drug discovery on the basis of TCM clinical pharmacy with insisting on holistic view of multicomponent study, kinetic view of metabolic process when the curative effect occurred and molecular material view of quality control and structure-activity exposition.

[Analysis of multicomponent drug metabolism used in clinical pharmacy research of traditional Chinese medicine].

Multicomponent drug metabolism can be defined as a research area that, rather than pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, is a concerted dynamic metabolic variation of one component in several other compounds circumstance with the interaction of transport protein and drug metabolizing enzymes, and the study of the dynamic course of multiple components must be simultaneously determined. By the use of multicomponent drug metabolism in the clinical pharmacy research of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it can become a useful tool with the integration of the overall dialectical method and the concrete molecular approach.

[FTIR and classification study on the Chinese compound recipe].

On the basis of building a model of main components and with the fingerprint infrared spectrum as the object-Xiaoerchoufeng powders were rapidly classified and closely studied by using the method of clustering analysis. Because of the tiny difference between the spectra of different compound recipes, including the compound recipe without scolopendra, the compound recipe without scorpio, the compound recipe without bombyx batryticatus, the compound recipe without eupolyphaga seu steleophaga and the compound recipe without periostracum cryptotympanae, the outcome of the clustering is ideal. When tested with the blind samples (which were picked out from the chosen samples) the accuracy of clustering reaches up to 90%. In order to increase the clustering accuracy, the number of the samples should be increased and also these samples should be more characteristic. On the whole, with the combination of the fingerprint spectrum and the clustering analysis, the compound recipe can be distinguished rapidly.