Acupoints: the focus and controversy of the international acupuncture research

In the past two decades, the domestic academic community of acupuncture and moxibustion has made some progress in anatomical and morphological characteristics of acupoints, as well as regulatory patterns and underlying mechanisms of needling at different acupoints. However, the developments of basic theory, clinical and scientific research are not balanced and lack of synergy, which has failed to form an internal driving force to promote the high-quality development of the discipline. On the basis of this “internal cause”, with the increasing attention of international scholars to acupuncture and acupoints, “external causes” such as disciplinary background gaps, scientific cognitive modes and cultural differences further highlight the shortcomings and drawbacks in the construction of the modern theory of acupuncture and acupoints, and questions such as “detheorizing” and “discarding acupoints and storing needles” continue to emerge. To fundamentally answer such questions, we should take the key scientific issues such as “the key anatomical structure of acupoints” and “the specific and general regulation of acupoints” as the guide, promote the reconstruction and modern expression of traditional theories of acupuncture and moxibustion, formulate corresponding clinical control plans and evaluation standards for specific clinical problems and limited goals, carry out organized and purposeful basic and translational research on acupoints, establish a new format of “intra-disciplinary linkage and inter-disciplinary cooperation”, so as to deeply reveal the anatomical structure basis of precise acupoint stimulation, elucidate the full view of characteristics of acupoint effects, explore the multi-target regulation and systems biology mechanisms of acupoints, build a contemporary acupuncture and moxibustion discipline system that keeps pace with the times, and lead the direction of acupuncture and moxibustion’s international development.