The Efficacy and Cerebral Mechanism of Intradermal Acupuncture for Major Depressive Disorder

Summary

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is highly prevalent, affecting nearly 4% of the global population. Pharmacotherapy is the frontline treatment recommended by the guideline, but it also has some limitations such as delayed onset, inadequate response, and drug resistance. Intradermal acupuncture (IA) is a method of using short indwelling needles retained under the skin to produce continuous stimulation for long-term efficacy. It has been reported that IA combination medication appears to be more valuable than medication alone in the treatment of MDD, however, there is a lack of high-quality clinical evidence.While several studies have proposed that manual or electroacupuncture can improve MDD symptoms by modulating brain networks, the cerebral mechanism of IA as superficial acupuncture for MDD has not been reported. Hence, investigators designed a multicentre randomized controlled trial to assess the clinical efficacy and safety of IA for MDD and preliminarily explore the potential therapeutic mechanisms for IA by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) .

Timeline

Start

2022-11-01

Primary completion

2024-01-01

Completion

2024-01-01

Publications

• Wu X, Tu M, Chen N, Yang J, Jin J, Qu S, Xiong S, Cao Z, Xu M, Pei S, Hu H, Ge Y, Fang J, Shao X. The efficacy and cerebral mechanism of intradermal acupuncture for major depressive disorder: a study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Front Psychiatry. 2023 May 15;14:1181947. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1181947. eCollection 2023.

Drugs

Indications