A Descriptive Statistical Approach to the Korean Pharmacopuncture Therapy

This paper reviews trends in research related to Korean pharmacopuncture therapy. Specifically, basic and clinical research in pharmacopuncture within the last decade is summarized by introducing categorical variables for classification. These variables are also analyzed for association. This literature review is based on articles published from February 1997 to December 2008 in a Korean journal, the Journal of the Korean Institute of Herbal Acupuncture, which was renamed the Journal of the Korean Pharmacopuncture Institute in 2007. Among the total of 379 papers published in the journal during this period, 164 papers were selected for their direct relevance to pharmacopuncture research and were categorized according to three variables: medicinal materials, acupuncture points and disease. The most frequently studied medicinal materials were bee-venom pharmacopuncture (42%), followed by meridian-field pharmacopuncture (24%), single-compound pharmacopuncture (24%), and eight-principle pharmacopuncture (10%). The frequency distributions of the acupuncture points and meridians for the injection of medicinal materials are presented. The most frequently used meridian and acupuncture point was the Bladder meridian and ST36, respectively. Contingency tables are also displayed to analyze the relationship between the categorized variables. Chi-squared analysis showed a significant association between the type of pharmacopuncture and disease. The trend in research reports on Korean pharmacopuncture therapy was reviewed and analyzed using a descriptive statistical approach to evaluate the therapeutic value of this technique for future research.