RESUMO
BACKGROUND:Chronic visceral pain is one of major complaints of irritable bowel syndrome which seriously affects patient’s quality of life. Recent researches have shown that moxibustion therapy has positive effects on aleviating chronic visceral pain in irritable bowel syndrome patients. OBJECTIVE: To study the clinical utility of moxibustion in coping with chronic visceral pain of irritable bowel syndrome patients, and shed light on the theoretical basis of moxibustion analgesia, thereby to give insights into the further research and application on moxibustion. METHODS: With the key words of “moxibustion, irritable bowel syndrome, visceral pain, abdominal pain” in Chinese and in English, respectively, a computer-based search was performed in CNKI, VIP, Wanfang and PubMed databases for articles published from January 1990 to October 2014. After the initial screening, the remained articles went through further selection and categorization. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The result shows promising results of moxibustion on relieving chronic visceral pain for both two subtypes of irritable bowel syndrome patients, diarrhea type and constipation type. Moxibustion may exert an analgesic effect on chronic visceral pain in irritable bowel syndrome patients through regulation of visceral hypersensitivity, gastrointestinal motility disorders, brain-gut axis and neuroendocrine system disorders, immune dysfunction and low-grade inflammation in the gut, psychological abnormalities, and alteration of intestinal flora. However, to fuly understand the analgesia effect of moxibustion and elucidate its mechanism, more standardized randomized controled trials employing advanced scientific techniques and equipments wil stil be needed in the future.
