[New technologies serve as accelerators for breakthroughs in modern acupuncture research].

Abstract

As one of China's most internationally influential original disciplines, acupuncture-moxibustion has a development history of over 2 000 years. The formation of its early theoretical framework was shaped by contemporaneous technological advancements. This article provided a systematic review of the history of modern acupuncture research, highlighting how early electrophysiological and biochemical techniques validated the objective effects of acupuncture-moxibustion, and, since the 1950s, how studies have elucidated acupuncture's analgesic mechanisms, meridian phenomena, acupoint-visceral organ correlations, and patterns of acupoint efficacy. It emphasized the role of contemporaneous technologies-ranging from systemic, organic approaches down to cellular, molecular, and genetic methods in advancing modern acupuncture-moxibustion research. The article also prospected that the application of emerging technologies such as single-cell sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, neuroimaging, artificial intelligence, and interdisciplinary medicine-engineering integration would play an important role in future acupuncture-moxibustion studies, and stresseed that technology should be applied in a scientifically driven, problem-oriented manner rather than through mere technical accumulation.