Acupuncture analgesia has been widely recognized as therapeutic for chronic pain in both basic and clinical studies. In the past decades, substantial progress in understanding the neural mechanisms of acupuncture analgesia has been made. The mechanisms of acupuncture analgesia are complex and involve direct and indirect neurohumoral effects that block pain perception, reduce the pain response, relieve muscle spasms, and reduce inflammation. Neurotransmitters are involved in the analgesic process of acupuncture, such as opioid peptide, glutamate, and calcium adenosine. In the past decades, with the development of real-time and visualized neuroimaging techniques, exploring the central mechanism of acupuncture analgesia has attracted increasing attention. Modern research has shown that analgesia is essentially a manifestation of integrative processes at different levels in the central nervous system (CNS) between afferent impulses from pain regions and impulses from acupoints. In clinical studies, there are growing numbers of clinical trials supporting the use of acupuncture as an evidence-based practice for pain management. There are many clinical trials supporting the efficacy of acupuncture for low back pain, neck pain, chronic idiopathic and migraine headaches, knee pain, shoulder pain, fibromyalgia, temporomandibular joint pain, and postoperative pain.

This Special Issue invites original research, randomized clinical trials, advanced studies on the understanding of the mechanisms of acupuncture analgesia, systematic reviews, and meta-statistical analysis on acupuncture analgesia.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Acupoints and acupuncture analgesia
• Acupuncture, dry needling, stimulation and analgesia
• Neurohumoral and neurotransmitters mechanisms of acupuncture analgesia
• Molecular mechanisms of acupuncture analgesia
• Stimulation of acupuncture analgesia pathways
• Acupuncture analgesia in experimental pain models
• Nociceptive pathways of acupuncture analgesia
• Immediate acupuncture analgesia
• Neuroimaging in the understanding of acupuncture analgesia
• Anti-inflammation and acupuncture analgesia
• Clinical applications and practice of acupuncture analgesia