ArticleFrontiers in neurology2026
Determinants of MoCA improvement in post-ischemic stroke patients receiving acupuncture: a retrospective study.
Article in Frontiers in neurology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background: Acupuncture is commonly integrated into multimodal rehabilitation programs for post-ischemic stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI), but the factors associated with cognitive improvement in this complex treatment context remain unclear. This retrospective study investigated factors associated with cognitive improvement in stroke patients receiving acupuncture as part of a standardized multimodal inpatient rehabilitation program. Methods: In this single-center retrospective cohort study, 226 ischemic stroke patients treated with acupuncture between January 2023 and December 2025 were enrolled. Demographic data, clinical characteristics, acupuncture treatment parameters, and laboratory indicators were collected from electronic medical records. Cognitive function was assessed using MoCA, MMSE, LOTCA, MBI, HAMD, HAMA, and PSQI scales. Patients were categorized into improvement (ΔMoCA ≥2) and non-improvement groups. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to identify factors associated with cognitive improvement. Results: Among the 226 patients, 148 (65.49%) achieved improvement. After treatment, the improvement group showed significant improvements in MoCA and MMSE scores compared with baseline and the non-improvement group [between-group difference for post-treatment MoCA: 1.59 (95% CI 0.82 to 2.36; Conclusion: In this retrospective cohort of PSCI patients receiving acupuncture within a multimodal inpatient rehabilitation setting, shorter time from stroke onset to acupuncture initiation, higher weekly frequency, and longer treatment duration were exploratory factors associated with a greater likelihood of meeting the predefined ΔMoCA improvement threshold in this cohort. These hypothesis-generating observations may inform the design of future prospective studies and suggest patient characteristics that warrant further investigation. However, given the uncontrolled design, these findings cannot establish acupuncture-specific efficacy and should be considered hypothesis-generating, warranting confirmation through prospective randomized controlled trials.
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