Discovery of the mechanisms of acupuncture in the treatment of migraine based on functional magnetic resonance imaging and omics / 医学前沿

Migraine is one of the most prevalent and disabling neurological disease, but the current pharmacotherapies show limited efficacy and often accompanied by adverse effects. Acupuncture is a promising complementary therapy, but further clinical evidence is needed. The influence of acupuncture on migraine is not an immediate effect, and its mechanism remains unclear. This study aims to provide further clinical evidence for the anti-migraine effects of acupuncture and explore the mechanism involved. A randomized controlled trial was performed among 10 normal controls and 38 migraineurs. The migraineurs were divided into blank control, sham acupuncture, and acupuncture groups. Patients were subjected to two courses of treatment, and each treatment lasted for 5 days, with an interval of 1 day between the two courses. The effectiveness of treatment was evaluated using pain questionnaire. The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were analyzed for investigating brain changes induced by treatments. Blood plasma was collected for metabolomics and proteomics studies. Correlation and mediation analyses were performed to investigate the interaction between clinical, fMRI and omics changes. Results showed that acupuncture effectively relieved migraine symptoms in a way different from sham acupuncture in terms of curative effect, affected brain regions, and signaling pathways. The anti-migraine mechanism involves a complex network related to the regulation of the response to hypoxic stress, reversal of brain energy imbalance, and regulation of inflammation. The brain regions of migraineurs affected by acupuncture include the lingual gyrus, default mode network, and cerebellum. The effect of acupuncture on patients' metabolites/proteins may precede that of the brain.

Measurement protocol and discriminant analysis of rapid screening tools for assessing the risk of mild cognitive impairment / 中华老年医学杂志

Objective:To develop rapid screening tools for assessing the risk of mild cognitive impairment(MCI)based on neuropsychological scales and cognitive paradigms.Methods:Two baseline datasets from the Beijing Ageing Brain Rejuvenation Initiative(BABRI)cohort were studied: dataset 1 contained 5 593 subjects, with 1 500 cases with MCI and 4 093 cases with normal cognitive function(the control group); dataset 2 consisted of 588 subjects, with 92 cases with MCI and 496 cases with normal cognitive function(the control group). Dataset 1 was used to simplify the Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE), and the sub-item combination with the strongest MCI discriminative ability was selected to integrate into the cognitive rapid assessment(BABRI-mini MMSE). Dataset 2 with scores of encoding-recognition episodic memory task was used for further MCI discriminant analysis and was adapted into an episodic memory test(BABRI-EMT). We applied the receiver operating characteristic curve(ROC)for those analyses.Results:The control group and the MCI group showed significant differences in multi-domain cognitive ability and episodic memory task performance( P<0.01). Among sub-items of MMSE measured using dataset 1, MMSE12 and MMSE19 had the highest discriminative accuracy for MCI, and the area under the ROC(AUC)was 0.699 and 0.631, respectively.Dataset 2 was used to investigate the discriminative ability of the episodic memory score in combination with the above two MMSE sub-items for MCI, and the AUC value was 0.732, the sensitivity was 0.731, and the specificity was 0.656. Conclusions:The BABRI-mini MMSE and BABRI-EMT are suitable for the large-scale universal screening of MCI risk.