SI Yingkui, ZHANG Yamin, SUN Hua

(1 Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences .Department of traditional Chinese medicine, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing 100730; Department of traditional Chinese medicine; Peking Union Medical College Hospital; Beijing; 100730; China)

Abstract: Vascular dementia (VaD) is a group of clinical syndromes characterized by cognitive decline as a result of ischemic or hemorrhagic cerebrovascular disease. It's the second largest type of dementia, second only to Alzheimer's disease (Alzheimer  disease, AD), and the only one of the possible types of dementia that can prevent it. In recent years, with the aging of the population, the incidence of vascular dementia has shown a marked upward trend. The present study showed that acupuncture treatment  can regulate cell apoptosis, neurotransmitter deficiency, oxidative stress, inflammation, vascular injury and other neural mechanisms involved in vascular dementia; the main problems: an experimental study in VaD animal model used is not unified, most experimental design was less strict, and the sample size is too small, can regulate the  experimental  design  in  future  research,  the  signaling  pathway  as  a  starting  point,  to  provide  the experimental basis for the clinical treatment of the exact VaD. 

Keyword: vascular dementia, Acupuncture, Acupuncture, Moxibustion, experiment summary