Kinetics of Changes in Acceleration Photoplethysmogram Indices Elicited by Pericardium 6 Acupoint

Objective: To observe the kinetics of acupuncture effect at the pericardium 6 acupoint on the acceleration photoplethysmogram (APG) indices in healthy people. Subjects and methods: Photoplethysmography pulse waveforms were recorded non-invasively for 20 min from the right index finger in eight normal healthy human subjects. The AGP-b/a, AGP-d/a, and the ADP-AI indices based on the height of the photoplethysmogram wave components were calculated.Manual acupuncture of Pericardium 6 acupoint during 5 min contralateral to photoplethysmograph registration was applied.The APG indices values at basal versus acupuncture stimulation period and posacupuncture were compared using the t-student test.Results: APG-b/a and APG-AI indices increased during acupuncture stimulation and decreased after needle withdrawal; both changes were no significant.Otherwise, APG-d/a steadily decreased during acupuncture and posacupunture, and comparing basal versus 20 min values, there was a significant difference (p= 0.031). Conclusion:The results show that manual acupuncture in PC6 acupoint acutely modifies APG indices and the FFT-smoothed spectrum of APG indices can be taken as a kinetic modeling to study the time-sequence of the effects of acupuncture on cardiovascular variables.