Acupoint compatibility is not only a foundation for formulating acupoint recipes in clinical practice

but also a core of meridian and acupoint theory.Many studies have revealed that the application of multiple-acupoints combination in the treatment of different clinical conditions or illnesses may lead to three outcomes

i.e.

synergistic effect

antagonistic effect and no effect.Therefore

the application of multiple acupoints combination is definitely not a simple result of 1+1=2

or 2-1=1in the management of many clinical disorders

and rather

the reasonable combination of multiple acupoints is a non-liner

dynamic and complicated issue.It has been well documented that the complex biological network consists of modules/communities

a set of nodes that are more densely inter-connected among themselves than with the rest of the network

which can be detected by community detection according to their modularity.After analyzing the current status and development trends of acupoint comparability researches in both China and other countries of the world

the authors of the present paper put forward some ideas and methods for the research of correlation

composing characteristics and dynamically evolutionary regularities of acupoint combination from the macroscopic and local aspects

dynamic and static angles on the basis of the theory of community structure theory of complex networks.