Department of Acupuncture, People's Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China.
Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2013;2013:894096. doi: 10.1155/2013/894096. Epub 2013 Nov 12.
The goal of this study was to investigate the impact and acceptability of providing continuous auricular electroacupuncture as an adjunct to conventional medications for patients with depression. Ten patients with a mean age ± SD of 43.3 ± 10.4 years were able to provide informed consent. The quantitative and qualitative outcome measures were heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and different clinical scores. The study documented that a special kind of auricular electro acupuncture, applied over a period of three days, can improve various aspects of quality of life significantly but also highlighted the significant increase of HRV whilst having acupuncture treatment. In conclusion, our study shows stimulation-related and quantifiable clinical and physiological alterations in parameters after continuous auricular acupoint stimulation in patients with depression. Improved access to electro acupuncture treatment would be of major benefit for these patients. Further studies are necessary in order to verify the gained results.
本研究旨在探讨对抑郁症患者提供连续耳电针作为常规药物治疗的辅助手段的影响和可接受性。共有 10 名平均年龄 ± 标准差为 43.3 ± 10.4 岁的患者能够提供知情同意。定量和定性的结果测量包括心率、心率变异性 (HRV) 和不同的临床评分。研究记录表明，特殊类型的耳电针，在三天的时间内应用，可以显著改善生活质量的各个方面，但也强调了在进行针刺治疗时 HRV 的显著增加。总之，我们的研究表明，在抑郁症患者中，连续耳穴位刺激后，刺激相关的和可量化的临床和生理参数发生了变化。为这些患者提供更多的电针治疗机会将是非常有益的。需要进一步的研究来验证所获得的结果。
