Here is the abstract of the final report for the project "Improvement of Anesthesia and Analgesia of Acupuncture Combined with Drugs: Clinical Observation and Experimental Research"

one of the national key projects in the ninth five year plan.The results of clinical and experimental studies from Beijing

Chengdu and Shanghai showed that acupuncture combined with drugs is the very useful method during clinical anesthesia (no matter epidural anesthesia or general anesthesia) and analgesia (such as pain during labor

post operative pain and sciatic neuralgia). Acupuncture can not only produce analgesia

but also protect the physiological functions of many organs such as brain

heart

kidney and throat. By the way

some new progress about the experimental research of the mechanism of acupuncture analgesia has been carried out

such as the relationship between the new discovered neuro modulators (endomorphin

orphanin FQ) and acupuncture analgesia.