In vivo investigation on bio-markers of perimenopausal panic disorder and catgut embedding acupoints mechanism.

Background: Panic disorder (PD), defined by repeated and unexpected panic attacks, severely affects patients' living quality and social function. Perimenopausal women are high-risk group of PD and suffer greatly from it. Modern medicine therapies for this disorder have many side reactions and poor effects, so nonpharmacological modality is an urgent need. Although acupoint catgut embedding is widely used in clinical practice, there is no persuasive evidence of its effect for perimenopausal PD. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness and safety of acupoint catgut embedding for perimenopausal PD and to elucidate the correlations among brain neural activation, bio-markers (amino acids) and clinical outcomes with radiographic evidence, thus to explore its neural mechanism.

Methods: The parallel designed, exploratory randomized controlled trial will include 70 outpatients with perimenopausal PD recruited from two hospitals of Chinese Medicine. These subjects will be randomly allocated to an intervention group (Group Embedding) and a control group (Group Medication) in a 1:1 ratio. The subjects in the intervention group will receive acupoint catgut embedding treatment two weeks a time in the following predefined acupuncture points: Shenshu (BL23), Sanyinjiao (SP6), Guanyuan (RN4), Ganshu (BL18), Zusanli (ST36) and Pishu (BL20). The included women of the control group will take 0.4 mg Alprazolam tablet orally, 1 tablet a time, 3 times a day. There is a study period of 3 months and a follow-up period of 1 month for each group. The primary outcomes will be the following therapeutic indexes: the frequency of panic attack, Panic Disorder Severity Score (PDSS), and Panic-associated Symptoms Score (PASS) during the observation period and follow-up period. The changes in Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) Score and Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) Score will also be compared between these two groups. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) scans will be done before and after the observation period to show cranial neuroimaging changes.

Discussion: We present a study design and rationale to explore the effectiveness and neural mechanism of acupoint catgut embedding for perimenopausal PD. There are still several factors restrict our research such as no unified standard of diagnostic criteria and curative effect evaluation.

Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR-INR-16009724, registered in November 2016.