Acupuncture Treatment Modulate Regional Homogeneity of Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex in Patients with Amnesic Mild Cognitive Impairment

BACKGROUND: Although acupuncture is widely used to improve cognitive and memory in the amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients with impressive effectiveness, its neural mechanism remains largely unclear. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to explore functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) mechanism of acupuncture for aMCI. METHODS: A randomized, controlled, single-blind research was performed. A total of 46 aMCI patients were randomly assigned into verum and sham acupuncture group, who received a total of 24 times treatments (3 times/week, 8 weeks). Clinical evaluation and fMRI scanning were performed at baseline and after treatment for all aMCI patients. The interaction effects and inter-group effects of regional homogeneity (ReHo) were performed using mixed effect models, and the correlations between clinical improvement and neuroimaging changes before and after verum acupuncture treatment were analyzed using Pearson correlations. RESULTS: As a result, interaction effects showed increased ReHo value in left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), increased functional connectivity between left DLPFC and left precuneus, and decreased functional connectivity between left DLPFC and left inferior temporal gyrus after verum acupuncture but inversely after sham acupuncture in the aMCI. Condition effects showed increased ReHo in right lingual gyrus, and bilateral post-central gyrus after verum and sham acupuncture in the aMCI. In addition, the changed Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores in verum acupuncture group were significantly correlated with changed ReHo values in left DLPFC. CONCLUSION: Together, our findings further confirmed that acupuncture could be used as a promising complementary therapy for aMCI by modulating function of left DLPFC to improve cognitive symptoms.