結論：肌激痛點的興奮性可以透過遠處針灸治療來抑制。「改良式針灸組」遠處針灸穴位似乎比「留針組」在減少疼痛強度和終板雜訊電位之平均振幅以及增加壓力疼痛閾值上有更好的效果。更進一步，我們證實了終板電位的下降和疼痛的減低有很好的相關性。
Objective: To investigate the remote effect of acupuncture (AcP) on the pain intensity and the irritability of the myofascial trigger point (MTrP) in the upper trapezius muscle.
Design: Forty-five patients were equally divided into 3 groups: patients in the “placebo control (PC)” group received sham AcP; “simple needling (SN)” group was treated with simple needling, and “modified acupuncture (MAcP)” received AcP with the rapid “screwed in-and-out” into multiple sites to elicit local twitch responses. The acupoints of Wai-guan and Qu-chi were treated. The outcome assessments included changes in subjective pain intensity (PI), pressure pain threshold (PPT), range of motion (ROM) and mean amplitude of endplate noise (EPN) in the MTrP region.
Results: Immediately after acupuncture, all measured parameters improved significantly in the SN and MAcP groups, but not in the PC group. There were significantly larger changes in all parameters in the MAcP group than that in the SN group.
Conclusions: The MTrP irritability could be suppressed after a remote acupuncture treatment. It appears that needling to the remote AcP points with multiple needle insertions of MAcP technique is a better technique than simple needling insertion of SN technique in terms of the decrease in pain intensity and prevalence of EPN and the increase in PPT in the needling sites (represented either AcP points and or MTrPs). We have further confirmed that the reduction in EPN showed good correlation with a decreased in pain.
