Effect of "Tonifying Kidney and Invigorating Brain" acupuncture in children with spastic cerebral palsy analyzed by multi-modality MRI combined with dynamic electroencephalogram

Electroacupuncture stimulation modulates functional brain connectivity in the treatment of pediatric cerebral palsy: a case report

Background

Pediatric cerebral palsy (CP) is a non-progressive brain injury syndrome characterized by central motor dysfunction and insufficient brain coordination ability. The etiology of CP is complex and often accompanied by diverse complications such as intellectual disability and language disorders, making clinical treatment difficult. Despite the availability of pharmacological interventions, rehabilitation programs, and spasticity relief surgery as treatment options for CP, their effectiveness is still constrained. Electroacupuncture (EA) stimulation has demonstrated great improvements in motor function, but its comprehensive, objective therapeutic effects on pediatric CP remain to be clarified.

Methods

We present a case of a 5-year-old Chinese female child who was diagnosed with CP at the age of 4. The patient exhibited severe impairments in motor, language, social, and cognitive functions. We performed a 3-month period of EA rehabilitation, obtaining resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) of the patient at 0 month, 3 months and 5 months since treatment started, then characterized brain functional connectivity patterns in each phase for comparison.

Results

After a 12-month follow-up, notable advancements were observed in the patient's language and social symptoms. Changes of functional connectivity patterns confirmed this therapeutic effect and showed specific benefits for different recovery phase: starting from language functions then modulating social participation and other developmental behaviors.

Conclusion

This is a pioneering report demonstrating the longitudinal effect of EA stimulation on functional brain connectivity in CP patients, suggesting EA an effective intervention for developmental disabilities (especially language and social dysfunctions) associated with pediatric CP.

On Gesell Evaluation System for Disabled Children in Minority Areas

This paper takes 105 disabled children from the Disabled Rehabilitation Research Center of the South China minority autonomous region as the survey objects. Based on the Gesell scale, it collects health data such as exercise ability and health status of disabled children, analyzes the data in accordance with SPSS software, and constructs comprehensive disease analysis model of 105 disabled children. Moreover, according to five indicator data collected and tested for disabled children (adaptability, big movements, fine movements, language, and personal-social) in Gesell scale, comprehensive disease indicators of the disabled children are calculated and statistically analyzed together with age and gender information. This study analyzed comprehensive diseases and the correlation among various indicators, concluding that most disabled children aged 3–7 are diagnosed with moderate and severe developmental retardation, and retardation level is in obvious normal distribution. At the same time, there is a significant correlation between indicators of ability test interval and measurement indicators with age. This study suggests that targeted treatment and rehabilitation plans should be implemented for disabled children of different ages according to different indicators of ability test interval, which has reference value and significance for improving the treatment level of disabled children and realizing targeted rehabilitation.

Effectiveness and safety of pure acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis

BACKGROUND

Infantile cerebral palsy refers to brain damage in infants and young children during their development, causing brain dysfunction, mainly manifested as dyskinesia, which may be complicated by mental retardation, epilepsy, and bone and joint developmental disorders. Clinical practice shows that acupuncture can effectively treat children with cerebral palsy, but it needs to be proven. This research will systematically evaluate the clinical effectiveness and safety of acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy, and provide evidence-based evidence for it.

METHOD

Search the following databases, including CNKI, WANFANG, China Biomedical Database, VIP, PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science. The retrieval time is from the establishment of the databases to October 2020, collecting all clinical randomized controlled studies of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of children with cerebral palsy. Two investigators independently extract and evaluate the data of the included studies, and use RevMan V.5.3 software to conduct meta-analysis of the included literature.

RESULT

This study evaluates the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy through indicators such as Gross Motor Function Measure Scale, the Modified Ashworth Scale, and so on.

CONCLUSION

This study will provide reliable evidence-based evidence for the clinical application of acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

Private information from individuals will not be published. This systematic review also does not involve endangering participant rights. Ethical approval was not required. The results may be published in a peer-reviewed journal or disseminated at relevant conferences.

OSF REGISTRATION NUMBER

DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/7GUF5.