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CLINICAL TRIAL article

Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurorehabilitation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1507475

Electroacupuncture Combined with Cognitive Rehabilitation Outperforms Cognitive Rehabilitation Alone in Treating Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment: A randomized controlled trial

Provisionally accepted
Yisha Guo Yisha Guo Tingting Sun Tingting Sun Fengxi Qiu Fengxi Qiu Xueyi Li Xueyi Li Weiwei Cui Weiwei Cui Jiajia Yao Jiajia Yao *
  • Shanghai Yangzhi Rehabilitation Hospital, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a 12-week intervention combining electroacupuncture (EA) with conventional cognitive rehabilitation (CR) on cognitive recovery and brain network topological properties in stroke patients. Thirty-four post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) patients were randomly assigned to either an EA+CR group or a CR-only group, with both undergoing five weekly interventions for 12 weeks. Cognitive assessments and Diffusion Tensor Imaging tests were performed pre-and post-intervention. Primary outcomes included the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Digit Span Test (DST), Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT-H), and Aphasia Screening Scale. Secondary outcomes measured brain network global and nodal properties. The EA+CR group showed significant improvements in MoCA (p<0.001), AVLT-H (p=0.004), and in areas like naming (p=0.022), attention (p<0.001), and delayed recall (p<0.001). Local brain network metrics, such as clustering coefficients (Cp) and local efficiency (Eloc), were significantly higher (p<0.05) in the EA+CR group, though global efficiency (Eglob) was unchanged. Improvements in Eloc were positively correlated with MoCA scores (r=0.0716, p=0.018). Specific brain regions, including the medial and paracentral cingulate gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and left supramarginal gyrus, exhibited significant nodal property differences, suggesting that EA may enhance cognitive recovery by targeting cognitively relevant regions. These findings indicate that EA, combined with CR, is a safe and effective treatment for cognitive impairment following stroke, potentially via structural brain network improvements. assess the impact of adjuvant electroacupuncture on vascular mild cognitive impairment (VaMCI). The findings indicated that electroacupuncture significantly improved clinical outcomes in patients with VaMCI(Shen et al., 2024). A lot of basic research in recent years has confirmed that the cognitive function of middle cerebral ischemia/reperfusion(MCAO/R) rats was significantly improved after EA treatment(

    Keywords: Cognition, DTI, Electroacupuncture, Stroke, Network analysis, graph theory

    Received: 11 Oct 2024; Accepted: 08 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Guo, Sun, Qiu, Li, Cui and Yao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jiajia Yao, Shanghai Yangzhi Rehabilitation Hospital, Shanghai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.