[Acupuncture prescriptions and regularity of acupoints matching in Huangdi Neijing]

To explore the acupuncture prescriptions and regularity of acupoints matching in Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic).

Based on the manual retrieval of articles regarding acupuncture prescriptions in Huangdi Neijing an acupuncture prescriptions database of Huangdi Neijing was constructed. The frequency analysis was used to analyze the acupuncture prescriptions and regularity of acupoints matching from 8 aspects: prescriptions of single acupoint/acupoints combination, specific acupoints, principles of acupoint selection, acupoint matching methods, symptoms/diseases, names and classifications of diseases in traditional Chinese medicine, acute/chronic diseases, local symptom/systemic symptom.

A total of 146 acupuncture prescriptions were obtained, including 76 prescriptions for single acupoint and 70 prescriptions for acupoints combination. The single-point prescription mostly involved specific acupoints, especially five-shu acupoints and crossing acupoint; shu acupoints were mainly selected in five-shu acupoints, and distant acupoint selection was the first choice for single-point prescription. The prescription of acupoints combination mostly involved combination of specific acupoints, especially five-shu acupoint combined with five-shu acupoint, and distant acupoint selection was the first choice for acupoints combination prescription; the acupoints combination prescription was mainly based on left-right acupoint matching method and same-meridian acupoint matching method. The single-acupoint prescription was applied for diseases of 4 systems, involving 61 diseases; acupoints combination prescription was applied for diseases of 3 systems, involving 47 diseases. The single-acupoint and acupoints combination prescriptions were mainly used to treat internal medical diseases. The single-acupoint prescriptions were used for patients with multiple symptoms, fewer diseases, more acute diseases and more local symptoms; acupoints combination prescriptions were used for patients with more diseases, fewer symptoms, more chronic diseases and more systemic symptoms.

The acupuncture prescriptions in Huangdi Neijing are mostly based on distant acupoints, and most of them are single acupoint prescriptions. In multi-acupoint prescriptions, the combination of five-shu acupoints are mostly used, especially left-right acupoint matching method and same-meridian acupoint matching method. Single acupoint is used to treat acute and local symptoms, and multi-acupoint is used to treat chronic and systemic diseases.