Effectiveness of acupoint sticking therapy in common chronic diseases, with disease differentiation principle

Acupoint sticking therapy (AST) is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)-based tropical treatment that stick the pasty preparations, which are creams mixed with various medicinal extracts and liquids, to certain acupoints or the diseased sites to achieve specific therapeutic effectiveness by exerting the efficacies of drugs and/or by acting on acupoints and meridians. Most previous reports on AST focusing on the respiratory system, immunologically in particular, demonstrated effectiveness of AST in treating chronic respiratory diseases including chronic bronchitis, allergic rhinitis, and bronchial asthma (1-3). In recent years, AST has been applied in the management of various chronic diseases due to its advantages in flexible formulas, simple procedures, and documented safety and effectiveness (4-6). Based on our rich experiences in AST applications, we have modified its prescriptions and achieved good clinical efficacies in treating chronic diseases based on proper disease differentiation