UNC researchers to study use of Korean acupuncture in neurological conditions

By TOM HUGHES
UNC School of Medicine

CHAPEL HILL -- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine researchers have received a federal grant to collaborate with Korean researchers in studying acupuncture’s use in treating major neurological conditions.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health awarded the two-year $254,740 grant to establish the Korean Acupuncture in Central Nervous System Disorders Center.

The acupuncture center, to be based at UNC, will coordinate and oversee parallel research projects carried out at UNC and Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea. These projects will test the effectiveness of Korean acupuncture for treating patients who have migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, stroke or spinal cord injury, said Dr. J. Douglas Mann of UNC, the study’s principal investigator and a professor in the School of Medicine’s department of neurology.

"Korean acupuncture has been reported to be effective in treating most of these conditions in Korea," Mann said. "What we want to see is whether there are cultural factors that influence outcomes. In other words, will Korean acupuncture work as well when performed in the United States as it does when performed in Korea?"

UNC was one of 10 institutions awarded grants as part of the national center’s program called Planning Grants for International Centers for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This program’s goal is to establish global collaborations and cross-cultural exchange among foreign and U.S. institutions to design and implement research on complementary and alternative medical approaches that have emerged from traditional indigenous medical systems.

For this multi-project study, four UNC faculty will be trained in Korean acupuncture techniques by Korean colleagues. They are Drs. Michael Lee, professor and chairman of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation; Gloria Liu, assistant professor in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation; and Remy Coeytaux, assistant professor, and Wunian Chen, instructor, both in the department of family medicine.

All four are trained and licensed in Chinese acupuncture and are using it in their clinical work.

Other UNC co-investigators on the project include Drs. Susan Gaylord, assistant professor and director of the Program on Integrative Medicine; David Huang, Ana Felix and Xue Mei Huang, assistant professors in the department of neurology; Richard Mailman, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology and director of the department of psychiatry’s Division of Psychobiology and Research; Weili Lin, associate professor of radiology, neurology and biomedical engineering and director of magnetic resonance research at UNC; and Aysenil Belger, associate professor of psychiatry and director of neuroimaging research in psychiatry.

The UNC researchers chose to work with their counterparts at Kyung Hee University in part because of Lee’s contacts there, Mann said. In addition, the Korean researchers shared an interest in conducting research into the use of acupuncture for major neurological conditions.

The other institutions that received the planning grants were Bastyr University, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Harvard University Medical School, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the University of California at San Francisco, the University of Maryland at Baltimore, the University of Missouri and the University of Washington.

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Note: Contact Mann at (919) 966-2527 or mannj@glial.med.unc.edu.

School of Medicine contact: Stephanie Crayton-Robinson, (919) 966-2860