[Acupuncture and Moxibustion and Immunity: the Actuality and Future]

Immunity reaction has been regarded as a key step for clinical acupuncture and moxibustion treatment. In the present paper, we review current situations about studies on acupuncture-moxibustion induced immunoregulation from 1) related project fundings of National Natural Science Foundation (NCFS) of China from 1989-2017; 2) papers published in SCI and Chinese medical journals from 2010-2018; 3) clinical conditions or disorders treated by acupuncture and moxibustion and their clinical therapeutic effects; 4) the commonly used acupoints for studying immune regulation functions; 5) some mechanisms of innate immunity and adaptive immunity involved; and 6) immune adjustment pathways involved. Moreover, in our future studies, we suggest to pay more attention to 1) the detailed cellular molecular mechanisms; 2) interactions among the immune cells, the immune cells and non-immune cells and cytokines responsible for regulation effects of acupuncture-moxibustion; 3) interrelationship of different systems as skin-brain axis, brain-intestinal axis, nerve-blood vessel unit of brain tissues, etc. involving acupuncture-moxibustion induced immunoregulation by using new techniques as proteomics, genomics, two-photon imaging technology, tracer technique, cryo-electronic microscope technology, etc.