Neuronal Specificity of Acupuncture in Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients: A Functional MRI Study

Table 1

Principal demographic and clinical characteristics of participants.

	AD patients		MCI patients		HC	P
	RA	SA	RA	SA
Gender [M/F] (frequencies)	14 (4/10)	7 (5/2)	8 (3/5)	6 (3/3)	14 (6/8)
Age [years], mean (SD)	66.93±8.91	71.29±4.75	66.38±10.97	67.83±6.01	66.07±5.78	0.68
Education [years], mean (SD)	10.07±3.38	8.86±6.69	10.63±3.54	11.00±3.16	11.00±4.52	0.60
MMSE score, mean (SD)	15.92±4.12	11.71±7.20	25.38±1.30	25.67±2.34	28.00±1.41	<0.01
AVLT score, mean (SD)
immediate	11.36±3.95	7.00±5.69	14.13±3.52	22.50±3.02	26.86±5.25	<0.01
delayed	2.64±1.60	1.57±1.62	4.38±1.60	7.83±3.92	11.07±2.76	<0.01
recognition	3.36±1.55	4.14±3.34	7.38±3.11	9.17±3.19	12.71±2.09	<0.01
CDR, mean (SD)	1–2	1–2	0.5	0.5	0

RA, real acupuncture point group; SA, sham acupuncture point group; HC, healthy control group; MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination; AVLT, Auditory Verbal Learning Test; immediate, immediate recall of learning verbal; delayed, delayed recall of learning verbal; recognition, recognition of learning verbal; CDR, clinical dementia rate. All plus-minus values were means ± standard deviation (SD).
  P values were obtained by one-way analysis of variance tests (ANOVA) among AD patients, MCI patients, and HC.