ABSTRACT
Acupuncture could modulate the immune responses and is clinically used for the treatment of some allergicand immunological disorders. But the benefits of the clinical use of acupuncture for the treatment of theimmunoligical diseases have not been fully established. Further, the mechanisms by which acupuncture affects the immune responses have not been clarified. Here, we review the reports about the clinical effects of acupuncture on immunological diseases and about the basic mechanisms of immune modulation by the acupuncture. From these reports and our experimental data, acupuncture could influence the amount of cytokines produced by immunocompetent cells, so we present the hypothetical mechanisms of immunoregulatory action of acupuncture.