Pharmacopuncture Improves the Lipid Profile in Patients under Statins: Retrospective Study at a Korean Medicine Clinic.

Objective: To assess the efficacy of pharmacopuncture (PA) in improving lipid profiles of patients under statin therapy.

Design and setting: Single-center retrospective study.

Interventions: Fifty-nine patients who were previously under statins were retrospectively analyzed. We injected 10 cc of PA twice or thrice a week for 12 to 16 weeks at the acupoint (CV5). The PA solution was based on aqueous extracts of various herbs: Taraxaci Herba, Artemisiae Annuae Herba, Elsholtziae Herba, Acanthopanacis Cortex, and Rumecis Radix.

Main outcome measures: Lipid profiles, including total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglyceride (TG) levels, were compared before and after PA treatment within patients.

Results: The mean age was 59.03 ± 19.82 years, and 50.8% were women (n=30). TC and LDL-C levels decreased from 233.6 ± 54.6 mg/dL to 202.0 ± 26.4 mg/dL (P = 1.27×10-6) and from 175.1 ± 46.2 mg/dL to 133.1 ± 21.6 mg/dL (P = 1.37×10-10), respectively. Interestingly, HDL-C level increased from 30.4 ± 14.6 mg/dL to 43.1 ± 12.1 mg/dL (P = 4.39×10-10), where men demonstrated better improvement than women (P = 1.73×10-3).

Conclusion: Our findings highlight the adjuvant effects of PA treatment on the lipid profile in patients under statins and the sex interaction in HDL-C improvement, which provides a clinical foundation for future clinical trials with personalized treatment strategies to establish the clinical benefits of PA treatment with statins.