ArticleCNS neuroscience & therapeutics2022
Modulation effect of acupuncture treatment on chronic neck and shoulder pain in female patients: Evidence from periaqueductal gray-based functional connectivity.
Article in CNS neuroscience & therapeutics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Functional brain alterations associated with acupuncture for chronic pain: a scoping review of fMRI studies.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Modulation effects of different treatments on periaqueductal gray resting state functional connectivity in knee osteoarthritis knee pain patients.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2023Trial
- Neuroinflammation-informed neuroimaging-transcriptomic signatures explaining acupuncture's therapeutic effects in chronic insomnia.Chinese medicine · 2025Article
- Altered brain dynamics in chronic neck and shoulder pain revealed by hidden Markov model.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Potential neural mechanisms of acupuncture therapy on migraine: a systematic review and activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis update.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2025Article
- Application of Acupuncture in Cervical Spondylotic Radiculopathy: An In-Depth Analysis and Outlook on Pathophysiological Basis and Therapeutic Mechanisms.International journal of general medicine · 2025Review
- Shallow Acupuncture for Chronic Neck Pain: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial Protocol with fMRI and DTI.Journal of pain research · 2025Article
- Effects of acupuncture on pain and function in patients with subacromial impingement syndrome: A randomized sham-controlled trial.Integrative medicine research · 2024Article
- Disrupted Resting-State Functional Connectivity and Effective Connectivity of the Nucleus Accumbens in Chronic Low Back Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of pain research · 2024Article
- Gender Differences in Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuation Alterations in Healthy Volunteers by Acupuncture on Left "LI 15": A Resting-State fMRI Study.Behavioural neurology · 2024Article
- Functional Brain Changes in Younger Population of Cervical Spondylosis Patients with Chronic Neck Pain.Journal of pain research · 2024Article
- Application of Acupuncture for Shoulder Pain Over the Past 22 Years: A Bibliometric Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2023Article
- Resting-state abnormalities in functional connectivity of the default mode network in migraine: A meta-analysis.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Review
- International performance of acupuncture for shoulder pain over more than four decades: a bibliometric study.American journal of translational research · 2023Article
- Modulation effect of acupuncture treatment on chronic neck and shoulder pain in female patients: Evidence from periaqueductal gray-based functional connectivity.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2022Article
- Abnormal Dorsal Caudate Activation Mediated Impaired Cognitive Flexibility in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Intra-individual structural covariance network in patients with chronic neck and shoulder pain: a longitudinal brain structure analysis.Frontiers in neurologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
aimsChronic neck and shoulder pain (CNSP) is a common neurological disorder, which females are more likely to suffer from. The periaqueductal gray (PAG) plays a key role in the descending modulation of pain. This study aimed to investigate altered PAG-based functional connectivity (FC) in female patients with CNSP related to healthy controls (HCs) and the effect of acupuncture for female patients with CNSP using PAG-based FC biomarkers.
methodsPAG-based FC value was calculated based on resting-state functional images and then compared between patients with CNSP at pre-acupuncture, post-acupuncture, and HCs. Then, correlational analyses were performed to examine the relationships between increased PAG-based FC strength and improved clinical parameters in patients after acupuncture treatment.
resultsBefore acupuncture treatment, compared to HCs, patients with CSNP showed altered PAG-based FC with widely distributed brain regions, including the left medial superior frontal gyrus, bilateral posterior insula (pIns), and cingulate gyrus. After treatment, patients with CNSP exhibited specially improved PAG-pIns FC compared to that before treatment, and no significant difference was observed in the increased PAG-pIns FC strength between HCs and patients with CNSP after treatment. Furthermore, pain catastrophizing reduction was significantly correlated with the increased PAG-pIns FC strength in patients after treatment.
conclusionThe effect of acupuncture treatment may relate to the increased PAG-pIns FC, which significantly correlated with pain catastrophizing reduction after treatment. These findings shed important mechanistic information on the role of therapeutic approaches in treating chronic neck and shoulder pain.
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