Effect of acupuncture and its influence on cerebral activity in patients with persistent asthma: study protocol for a randomized controlled clinical trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract BackgroundPrevious studies suggested that acupuncture was a promising adjunct treatment for asthma. However, the underlying mechanism of acupuncture for asthma remains unclear. The present trial aimed to explore whether and how specific meridian acupuncture works in quality of life and symptomatic improvement by modulating brain function in asthma patients.Methods: A randomized controlled functional brain imaging trial is currently being conducted in Sichuan, China. In total 48 patients with mild to moderate, persistent asthma will be recruited randomly allocated to two acupuncture groups: acupuncturing at Lung Meridian and acupuncturing at Heart Meridian. The treatment period will last for 4 weeks. The Asthma quality of life questionnaire (AQLQ) is the primary outcome. Asthma control test (ACT), the rate of Peak expiratory flow (PEFR), Forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA), Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) will also assess the clinical efficacy of different interventions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans will be performed to detect cerebral activity changes in each group. The clinical data and fMRI data will be analyzed, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis will be used to assess the association between the changes of cerebral activity features and the improvement of clinical outcomes in each group.Discussion: The present study has been established on the “meridians-viscera relationship” theory of traditional Chinese medicine and modern central mechanism of acupuncture. The results of this trial would be useful to identify the efficiency of the specific meridian acupuncture for asthma. The investigation of its central mechanism would further expand our knowledge of the acupuncture for asthma. Trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR1900027478. Registered on 15 November 2019.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.015 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.055 | 0.007 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".