Deqi Sensation to Predict Acupuncture Effect on Functional Dyspepsia: A Machine Learning Study

The aim of the study was to predict the effect of acupuncture for treating functional dyspepsia (FD) using the support vector machine (SVM) techniques based on initial deqi sensations of patients.

This retrospective study involved 90 FD patients who had received four weeks of acupuncture treatment. The support vector classification model was used to distinguish higher responders (patients with Symptom Index of Dyspepsia improvement score ≥ 2) from lower responders (patients with Symptom Index of Dyspepsia improvement score < 2). A support vector regression model was used to predict the change in the Symptom Index of Dyspepsia at the end of acupuncture treatment. Deqi sensations of patients in the first acupuncture treatment of a 20-session acupuncture intervention were defined as features and used to train models. Models were validated by 10-fold cross-validation and evaluated by accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, the area under the receive-operating curve, the coefficient of determination (R ²), and the mean squared error.

The two models could predict the efficacy of acupuncture successfully. These models had an accuracy of 0.84 in predicting acupuncture response, and an R ² of 0.16 in the prediction of symptom improvements, respectively. The presence or absence of deqi sensation, the duration of deqi sensation, distention, and pain were finally selected as significant predicting features.

Based on the SVM algorithms and deqi sensation, the current study successfully predicted the acupuncture response as well as clinical symptom improvement in FD patients at the end of treatment. Our prediction models are expected to promote the clinical efficacy of acupuncture treatment for FD, reduce medical expenditures, and optimize the allocation of medical resources.