AUTHOR=Wang Yanan , Xu Jing , Zhang Qing , Zhang Qi , Yang Ya , Wei Wei , Guo Xiaoli , Liang Fanrong , Yu Siyi , Yang Jie 

TITLE=Immediate Analgesic Effect of Acupuncture in Patients With Primary Dysmenorrhea: A fMRI Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.647667

DOI=10.3389/fnins.2021.647667

ISSN=1662-453X

ABSTRACT=Primary dysmenorrhea (PDM) is the common gynecological disease with the characteristic symptom of periodic pain in the lower abdomen. Acupuncture has been considered as a good alternative therapy for PDM. However, the brain mechanism of the analgesic effect of acupuncture is largely unknown. In this study, we combined task and resting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to investigate the potential brain mechanism of immediate effect of acupuncture intervention on pain intensity of PDM. The task fMRI study found the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and right supplemental motor area activated during real acupuncture. In addition, the change of functional connectivity (FC) between rACC and left precentral gyrus was also positively correlated with the short-time pain analgesia in PDM patients after acupuncture treatment, furthermore, the same FC at baseline also associated with the subsequent clinical responses. The findings supported the importance of rACC- left precentral gyrus rsFC in the modulation of pain intensity of PDM patients through acupuncture. Our study also implicated that the rACC and precentral FC could be a useful marker to predict the immediate analgesic effect of acupuncture for PDM.