Gaps between basic science and patient care in acupuncture study

Untreated hypertension increases the risk of heart disease and stroke that are one of commonest causes of death worldwide. In a recent article of American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology (1), Professor Guo and his colleagues of University of California at Irvine produced a new approach using rat model to reveal the mechanistic evidence of acupuncture therapy on hypertension; their study reported that transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 in the median afferent nerve contributes to inhibition of reflex increases in blood pressure during manual acupuncture, but not electro- or sham-acupuncture.