Objective:To investigate changes of blood lipid in ovariectomy rats after treatment with acupuncture and moxibustion in advance. Methods:Forty SD female rats(3.5 month old) were randomly and evenly divided into sham-operation group

ovariectomy group

preventive acupuncture group and preventive moxibustion group. In preventive acupuncture and preventive moxibustion groups

“Guanyuan” (CV 4) was punctured with the needle retained for 20 min

and given with moxibustion for one moxa-cone respectively. The treatment was conducted twice every week

4 weeks altogether. One month later

all the rats were killed for collecting blood examples. Serum total cholesterol (TCh)

triglyceride (TG)

high density lipoprotein (HDL) and low density lipoprotein (LDL) concentrations were detected with colorimetry. Results:Compared with sham-operation group

TCh and TG of ovariectomy group increased slightly(P> 0.05)

but HDL decreased significantly and LDL increased significantly(P<0.05)

showing an increase of blood lipid in ovariectomized rats. Compared with ovariectomy group

TG levels of preventive acupuncture group and preventive moxibustion group decreased significantly(P<0.05)

and HDL levels of these two groups increased significantly(P<0.01). In addition

the level of LDL of preventive moxibustion group decreased significantly compared with ovariectomy group(P<0.05). Besides

there were no considerable differences in the levels of the 4 indexes of blood lipid among preventive acupuncture

preventive moxibustion and sham-operation groups(P>0.05). Conclusion: Preventive acupuncture and preventive moxibustion can play a certain role in resisting or adjusting disorders of blood lipid in the ovariectomized rats.