Observational studyMedicine2017
Exploring spatial patterns of acupoint indications from clinical data: A STROBE-compliant article.
Observational study in Medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Whole-Body Effect Profiles of Acupoints: A Profile-Centric Framework for Specificity.Chinese journal of integrative medicine · 2026Article
- Decoding acupoint specificity: from neural patterns to bodily maps.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Performance of GPT-4 for planning acupuncture treatment: comparison with human clinician performance.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Oversimplifying the name of the 12 meridian channels.Integrative medicine research · 2023Article
- Characteristics of five-phase acupoints from data mining of randomized controlled clinical trials followed by multidimensional scaling.Integrative medicine research · 2022Article
- Shared nociceptive dorsal root ganglion neurons participating in acupoint sensitization.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2022Article
- Enhanced bodily states of fear facilitates bias perception of fearful faces.Molecular brain · 2020Article
- Statistical inference of acupoint specificity: forward and reverse inference.Integrative medicine research · 2020Article
- A Key Node Mining Method Based on Acupoint-Disease Network (ADN): A New Perspective for Exploring Acupoint Specificity.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2020Article
- Commonality and Specificity of Acupuncture Point Selections.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2020Article
- Revealing Associations between Diagnosis Patterns and Acupoint Prescriptions Using Medical Data Extracted from Case Reports.Journal of clinical medicine · 2019Article
- Characterization of hidden rules linking symptoms and selection of acupoint using an artificial neural network model.Frontiers of medicine · 2019Article
- Understanding Acupoint Sensitization: A Narrative Review on Phenomena, Potential Mechanism, and Clinical Application.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2019Review
- Expectations of the Physiological Responses Can Change the Somatosensory Experience for Acupuncture Stimulation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Article
- Brain activation during the expectations of sensory experience for cutaneous electrical stimulation.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2018Article
- Role of interoceptive accuracy in topographical changes in emotion-induced bodily sensations.PloS one · 2017Article
- Decoding spatial location of perceived pain to acupuncture needle using multivoxel pattern analysis.Molecular painArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Every acupoint has specific indications for acupuncture treatment. These indications, primarily established based on the meridian system, have spatial patterns of symptoms on the human body. We investigated the associations between acupoints and symptom locations in 75 patients with chronic pain who were asked to sketch the localization of their symptoms on body schemes using the bodily sensation map (BSM) system. Combining the BSM and clinical information, we estimated the statistical parameters of relationships between acupoints and spatial information on symptoms. We further visualized spatial patterns of indications of the representative acupoints on the human body template using a Z score. Using a statistical parametric map method, we observed significant activation patterns of 12 acupoint indications with spatial patterns. The 1st group of patterns was distant from the acupoint locus and was strongly associated with the route of the corresponding meridian. The 2nd group was found around the acupoint locus, the majority of which was located at the trunk or back areas. Intensive investigations of the spatial patterns of acupoint indications would be a novel paradigm to explain point specificity of acupuncture treatment based on the original concept of the meridian system. Future studies should include more meaningful clinical data with larger sample sizes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.