Using Omics Technology to Explore the Mechanism of Acupuncture Treatment of Different Acupoints of Knee Osteoarthritis

In recent years, commonly used Omics techniques, including genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, have been applied in the studies on the mechanism of acupuncture effect. In the previous study, "Immediate effects of proximal and distal acupoints on the Radial Pressure Pulse-wave in patients with knee osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial", significant changes in the spectral-energy of the pulse wave in the proximal-acupoint treatment group and the distal-acupoint treatment group infer pain relief and blood-flow improvement. The scores of the Visual Analog Scale were decreased, and the passive and active range of knee motions were increased. Both of the proximal and distant acupoints could be used for knee osteoarthritis treatment. To advance the previous work by becoming one treatment, this study will explore if there is any Omics difference resulting from the two acupoints, thus examining the mechanism of curative effect of acupuncture. Additionally, Chinese medical emphasizes the relationship between body constitution and diseases and the dynamic change of pulses and meridians during the disease development. These significances are in agreement with Omics features about organism integrity, dynamic, and complexity. The current study will adopt a Chinese medical body constitution survey, the spectral-energy (SE) changes of the pressure wave from the radial artery, and the pulse energy analysis of Ryodoraku to identify the differences in specific genes, protein, and metabolites of various body constitutions, pulses, changes of the pressure wave, aiming to set up the objectification of Chinese medical diagnosis.