Acupuncture treatment of essential hypertension

Abstract Objective: To study the effect of acupuncture on clinical symptom score, blood pressure (BP), ABI and baPWV index in patients with mild to moderate essential hypertension. Methods: The single-blind Randomized controlled trial included 90 patients with mild to moderate essential hypertension who were randomly divided into two acupuncture groups and a control group. The control group was treated with Western medicine, while the experimental group was treated with medicine and acupuncture at different acupoints, Acupuncture Group Ⅰ and Acupuncture Group Ⅱ. The treatment lasted for 12 weeks and the indexes were collected before and after treatment. The primary outcome measure was changes in blood pressure. The secondary outcome measures were ABI, baPWV and TCM symptom score. The safety evaluation index was the incidence of adverse events. Results: Acupuncture Group Ⅰ, Acupuncture Group Ⅱ and Control group all had 30 patients finished the study. The results showed that there were significant differences in blood pressure, ABI, baPWV index and TCM symptom score in the group compared with before intervention (P < 0.05). Acupuncture Group Ⅰ is superior to Acupuncture Group Ⅱ in improving systolic blood pressure, baPWV level, TCM symptom score and total effective rate. There are significant differences between the two groups and control group in various indexes, and the above differences are statistically significant (P<0.05). No significant complications occurred in the acupuncture group, no patient dropped out. Conclusions: The results show that acupuncture can effectively reduce blood pressure, improve clinical symptoms, and improve the level of arteriosclerosis index with high safety. More effective acupuncture points have been explored.