Application and Evaluation of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Neurological Diseases

Book excerpt: Neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, are an important cause of disability and death worldwide and pose a serious burden on the global health system over the past 30 years. Acupuncture, as the most widely used traditional Chinese medicine therapy in the world, has been widely used in 183 countries and regions. Acupuncture can treat more than 300 kinds of diseases, especially for neurological diseases. Due to the unique advantages of acupuncture such as good therapeutic effect and low side effects, many researchers have conducted extensive clinical studies on the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture in the treatment of neurological diseases, laying a foundation for the practicability and scientific vigor of this complementary and alternative therapeutic approach. There are still many problems unanswered in the current clinical research on acupuncture for the treatment of neurological diseases: First of all, clinical research is lagging behind due to the lack of emphasis on modern advanced methods and analytical techniques (e.g., artificial intelligence, omics analysis, bioinformatics analysis, data mining) and multidisciplinary integration process. Secondly, the quality of reports on most clinical studies of acupuncture treatment for neurological diseases is extremely low. Most clinical studies have not adopted standardized methodological evaluations, authoritative disease diagnosis standards, and efficacy evaluation standards. The lack of compliance regulations and strict study design reduces the accuracy and authenticity of the research. Thirdly, there is a lack of integrated assessment of the distribution of evidence for acupuncture treatment of neurological diseases. Therefore, strictly designed clinical research and in depth and systematic analysis method are currently needed to provide high-quality evidence for acupuncture treatment of neurological diseases. In this Research Topic, we hope to further understand the role of acupuncture in the treatment of neurological diseases through clinical research and secondary research. The range of acupuncture includes manual acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, body needling, auricular acupuncture, scalp acupuncture, laser acupuncture and acupressure, etc. Neurological diseases include stroke, meningitis, encephalitis, tetanus, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, migraine, tense-type headaches, headaches from drug overuse, and others.