Search

Once China abandoned its “zero-tolerance” policy of dealing with COVID-19, the disease spread like wildfire across China in December 2022 and January 2023, affecting a majority of China’s population. Acupuncture intervention in COVID-19 and post COVID-19 symptoms varied over time and across the country, from minimal use in 2020 to frontline engagement by 2023. As early as February 2020, the China Acupuncture and Moxibustion Association issued the document “Guidelines on Acupuncture and Moxibustion Intervention for COVID-19.” Since then, there has been sporadic publication of case histories, observational studies, and clinical trials in medical journals. By now, a pipeline of proposed systematic reviews is lined up that will document the history of acupuncture intervention for COVID-19 infection and post COVID symptom treatment. Rigorous clinical studies of acupuncture intervention for COVID-19 and long COVID are still very scanty, although pioneering efforts have been emerging. This paper attempts to document the trajectory of acupuncture intervention for COVID-19 through January, 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acupuncture is an important part of Chinese medicine that has been widely used in the treatment of inflammatory diseases. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, acupuncture has been used as a complementary treatment for COVID-19 in China. However, the underlying mechanism of acupuncture treatment of COVID-19 remains unclear. Based on bioinformatics/topology, this paper systematically revealed the multi-target mechanisms of acupuncture therapy for COVID-19 through text mining, bioinformatics, network topology, etc. Two active compounds produced after acupuncture and 180 protein targets were identified. A total of 522 Gene Ontology terms related to acupuncture for COVID-19 were identified, and 61 pathways were screened based on the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes. Our findings suggested that acupuncture treatment of COVID-19 was associated with suppression of inflammatory stress, improving immunity and regulating nervous system function, including activation of neuroactive ligand–receptor interaction, calcium signaling pathway, cancer pathway, viral carcinogenesis, Staphylococcus aureus infection, etc. The study also found that acupuncture may have additional benefits for COVID-19 patients with cancer, cardiovascular disease and obesity. Our study revealed for the first time the multiple synergistic mechanisms of acupuncture on COVID-19. Acupuncture may play an active role in the treatment of COVID-19 and deserves further promotion and application. These results may help to solve this pressing problem currently facing the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]