Kenji Namura

The effect of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

OBJECTIVE Many claims have been made regarding the therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture. However, most controlled clinical studies have been limited to treatment of pain-related disorders and do not provide objective, quantifiable data for analysis. Traditional acupuncture has been applied to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, only a few studies have been performed to determine the efficacy of this treatment. This study was conducted to determine whether a combination of traditional acupuncture treatment and conservative treatment for COPD improves dyspnea on exercise. METHODS This was a prospective trial with matched-pair parallel groups of patients from the departments of respiratory internal medicine of Gifu University of Medicine, Meiji University of Oriental Medicine, and Gifu Red Cross Hospital, Japan. Thirty patients were divided into the acupuncture group (n = 15) and the control group (n = 15). The control group received conservative treatment with medication only. The acupuncture group received acupuncture treatments once a week for 10 weeks, in addition to conservative treatment with medication. The main outcome measure was the Modified Borg dyspnea scale after the 6-minute walk test. RESULTS The acupuncture group had significantly better results on the Borg scale than the control group after 10 weeks (2.2 +/- 2.7 versus 6.4 +/- 3.4, p = 0.0001, 95% confidence interval, -5.10 to -2.35, paired t-test). The 6-minute walk distance and oxygen saturation at the minimum rate improved significantly in the acupuncture group compared with the control group. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrated that acupuncture contributed to the reduction of COPD-related dyspnea on exercise in 15 matched-pair parallel subjects.

Combined standard medication and acupuncture for COPD: a case series

Background Traditional acupuncture has been used in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, only a few studies have been performed to determine the efficacy of this treatment. Objective To observe changes in the symptoms of COPD during acupuncture treatment in patients with COPD stratified according to the severity of the disease. Methods A prospective case series of 26 patients with dyspnoea on exertion due to COPD was followed from October 2004 to October 2008 in the Departments of Respiratory Internal Medicine, Gifu University of Medicine and Meiji University of Integrative Medicine, Japan. All participants received acupuncture treatments once a week for 10 weeks in addition to standard medication therapy. The main outcome measure was the modified Borg dyspnoea scale after the 6 min walk test (6MWT) and the secondary outcome measure was the BODE index. Results All 26 patients showed significant improvement in the Borg dyspnoea scale after 10 weeks of acupuncture treatment (from 4.02 (2.85) to 1.96 (1.97), mean difference −2.06, 95% CI −3.03 to −1.09, p=0.0002, paired t test). Improvements in the BODE index, 6MWT and oxygen saturation during exercise, which indicates better reduced dyspnoea on exertion and prognosis, were also found. Conclusion The results of this study suggest that acupuncture treatment has clinically useful effects, at least in the short term, in reducing dyspnoea on exercise in patients with COPD, particularly in those more severely affected.

Flow cytometric analysis of nuclear DNA content in the endoscopic biopsy tissues of gastric cancer

The nuclear DNA content was measured by flow cytometry in gastric cancer patients using endoscopically biopsied tissue specimens. When the specimens were classified into diploid and aneuploid according to the DNA histogram, 56% (65/117) of the specimens were aneuploid. and advanced cancer was clearly more often aneuploid than early cancer. The frequency of aneuploidy appeared to be higher as the histologic depth of cancer was greater. Noncancerous tissues of the stomach were mostly diploid. The nuclear DNA ploidy pattern in gastric cancer cells could be analyzed by using endoscopic biopsy samples and this flow cytometric investigation would be possibly contributive to further characterization of gastric cancer in the diagnostic procedure of malignancy.