Content area
Full Text
Received Jan 17, 2018; Accepted Mar 12, 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
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative brain disease and the most common type of dementia in the elderly [1], accounting for approximately 40–50% of the total cases of dementia [2]. The symptoms of AD inevitably worsen progressively and lead to fatality [3]. At present, over 40 million people worldwide suffer from AD [4], including approximately 700,000 Americans aged 65 years or older in the United States, where it costs $259 billion in 2017 [5].
The main neuropathological features of AD are senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles [6], which gradually accumulate in the brain. As the disease progresses, these features damage brain circuits involved in cognition. The diagnosis of AD is mainly based on the clinical manifestation of symptoms, including progressive cognitive deficit, initially confined to episodic memory systems [7].
Recently, noninvasive neuroimaging has also been used increasingly in the diagnosis of AD [8], as cerebral glucose metabolism (CGM) is a consistent feature of AD [9]. 18F-2-Fluoro-deoxy-D-glucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) allows the observation of metabolic processes by monitoring positron-emitting radioactive tracers [7] as a marker of neuronal activity [10] and synaptic density [11]. As previous studies have shown that the metabolic changes of the extensive functional networks of the brain are associated with AD [12], some researchers have accepted FDG-PET as a suitable technique for the early and differential diagnosis of dementia [13], with a sensitivity of 94% and specificity of 73% [14].
Acupuncture has been used as a kind of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapy to treat senile dementia including AD in the past decades. Satisfactory and promising effects have been reported in clinical trials and animal experiments [15–19]. Shenting (GV24) and bilateral Benshen (GB13), belonging to the Governing Vessel and Foot Shaoyang Gall Bladder Channel, respectively, are commonly used in treating memory impairment and cognitive deficits [20–22]. However, the mechanism is uncertain. According to the TCM theory, the therapeutic effect of acupuncture is mainly related to the selected acupoints for acupuncture manipulation [23]. Therefore, the acupoint is a breakthrough...