NCT04272476

The Activation on Prefrontal Cortex With Acupuncture and Moxibustion for Major Depressive Disorder: A Study of Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy

The Activation on Prefrontal Cortex With Acupuncture and Moxibustion for Major Depressive Disorder: A Study of Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (ACUfNIRS)

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 2
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 20 (actual)
• Sponsor: Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This study evaluates the activation on prefrontal cortex with acupuncture and moxibustion for major depressive disorder.Half of participants will receive the treatment of acupuncture and moxibustion, while the other participants will receive the fluoxetine.

Detailed description

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a psychiatric condition with high morbidity, disability, suicide and recurrence rate and become the hot and difficult topics in the medical study. Given the unsatisfactory response rates of many FDA-approved antidepressants, acupuncture is increasingly considered an important alternative therapy. A large number of clinical trials have confirmed that acupuncture is a generally safe, effective, and well-tolerated therapy for depression, but for MDD, the acupuncture clinical trials were only reported out of China. According to the clinical symptoms in patients with MDD, the chief TCM patterns are liver qi constraint and heart yang insufficiency, and the secondary TCM patterns are blood stasis, qi and blood deficiency. So we propose to combine acupuncture with moxibustion and select Baihui (DU20), shenting(DU24), Neiguan (PC6), Hegu (LI4), Taichong (LV3), Zusanli(ST36), Zhongwan (RN 12) and Gaunyuan (RN4) to Soothe the Liver, regulating the heart, warm the yang qi, boost qi and invigorate blood for MDD. We hypothesize that the acupuncture's antidepressant effect is based on the neural network reconstructing mechanism through studying the cerebral cortex function, hippocampal synaptic plasticity, Neurons electrophysiological change. We will employ multi-disciplinary methods in neuropsychology, neuroimaging, computer science, and electrophysiology to explore the important mechanism underlying acupuncture and moxibustion treating MDD.

Conditions

• Depressive Disorder, Major

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	acupuncture and moxibustion
DRUG	Fluoxetine

Timeline

• Start date: 2014-01-01
• Primary completion: 2019-12-01
• Completion: 2019-12-01
• First posted: 2020-02-17
• Last updated: 2020-02-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: China