Content area
Full text
Received Jan 31, 2018; Accepted Apr 23, 2018
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Stroke is the second major cause of death in the world [1] and the first leading cause of adult disability. It is reported that there are 1.5 to 2 million new strokes per year in China [2]. The symptoms caused by stroke, such as hemiplegia, cognitive disorder, aphasia, and dysphagia, greatly affect the ability of patients to perform activities of daily living (ADL), as well as social participation, imposing a great burden on families and communities in many developed countries [3]. Stroke became an important public health-care and social issue because of its high prevalence, unsatisfactory treatment options, large medical burden, and serious reduction in quality of life (QQL). Hence, both patients and practitioners desire effective alternative therapies.
Acupuncture, a major medical resource, has been extensively used to treat stroke for several millennia. Acupuncture is regarded as a very effective therapeutic intervention and is becoming more and more popular in western countries [4, 5]. During the past decades, a considerable number of clinical and experimental studies have shown its safety and potential beneficial effects in the poststroke rehabilitation [6]. The latest review in 2016 has indicated that acupuncture was demonstrated to be a promising tool for improving functional recovery in stroke patients [7]. However, we still have not been able to explore its exact so far.
In recent years, some studies suggested that structural neuroplastic changes in the brain, such as grey matter volume, might be closely related to both behavioral recovery and active rehabilitation after stroke [8–10]. Miao et al. [11] found that well-recovered stroke patients exhibited significantly increased grey matter volume (GMV) in contralesional supplementary motor area (SMA). In another motor rehabilitation therapy study, stroke patients have shown a high GMV in frontal and parietal sensory-motor areas and in the hippocampus [12]. Moreover, our previous research [13] also found that stroke patients showed some changes in cerebral GMV, including precentral gyrus, cerebellum, and middle frontal gyrus compared with healthy subjects. However, whether acupuncture can induce the structural changes was not addressed in the...