Exercise Plus Acupuncture on Consensus Acupoints Versus Acupoints Selected by the Theory of Equal Impact on Tendons, Bones, and Muscles for Knee Osteoarthritis.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Context: Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a degenerative disorder that significantly affects patients' quality of life. Acupuncture and exercise are the most popular treatments currently. The outcomes for acupuncture for KOA, however, are controversial, with some researchers finding that the addition of acupuncture to exercise therapy provided no additional improvement in pain scores. Objective: The study intended to evaluate the therapeutic effects for KOA of exercise in combination with acupuncture on acupoints selected using the Traditional Chinse Medicine (TCM) theory of Equal Impact on Tendons, Bones, and Muscles (EITBM) in comparison with that of acupoints selected using classical consensus for the treatment. Design: The research team performed a randomized controlled trial. Setting: The study took place in the Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion at the First Affiliated Hospital of Hebei University of Chinese Medicine in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China. Participants: Participants were 70 patients with KOA who visited the hospital between December 2020 and February 2021. Intervention: Participants in both group received acupuncture plus exercise therapy. The research team randomly assigned participants to one of two groups: (1) 35 to the intervention group, which received acupuncture using acupoints selected using EITBM, and (2) 35 to the control group, which received acupuncture using the classical consensus acupoints. Both groups performed a 25-min session of acupuncture three times weekly for 4 weeks, with the exercise therapy following the acupuncture each time. Outcome Measures: The research team assessed clinical efficacy at baseline and postintervention. The primary outcome measures included assessments: (1) of knee joint pain using a visual analog scale (VAS), (2) of knee joint pain, flexibility, and function using the Western Ontario and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain subscale; and (3) joint range of motion (ROM). The secondary outcome measures included measurement of serum levels of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1ß), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and matrix metalloproteinase-13 (MMP-13) using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Results: The VAS and WOMAC scores significantly decreased for both groups between baseline and postintervention, and the intervention group's decrease was significantly greater than that of the control group. The ROM of knee flexion was significantly higher in both groups postintervention than at baseline, and the intervention group's increase was significantly higher than that of the control group. The serum IL-1ß, TNF-α, and MMP-13 also significantly decreased postintervention in both groups, and the intervention group's levels were significantly lower than those of the control group. The total effective rate was 94.1% in the intervention group, 32 out of 34 participants, and 75.8% in the control group, 25 out of 33 participants, which was significantly different. Conclusions: Acupuncture, in combination with exercise, can relieve symptoms, improve joint function, and reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1ß and TNF-a) as well as MMP-13 for patients with KOA. The outcomes for acupuncture using EITBM acupoints were significantly better than those of the acupoints selected using classical consensus.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".