Acupuncture improves muscle function recovery in stroke patients

Paralysis on one side of the body is common after stroke. A new study in CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics demonstrates that acupuncture can significantly improve muscle function recovery in patients who experienced a stroke, with this recovery correlating to increases in grey matter volume in certain regions of the brain related to cognitive-motor integration.

For the study, 56 patients with stroke were randomly allocated in a 2:1 ratio to receive either true-acupoint or sham-acupoint acupuncture over a 2-week period. Only the true-acupoint group showed significant improvements in motor recovery tests. Increases in gray matter volume in the right opercular inferior frontal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, and cerebellar region of the brain were positively correlated with limb motor function recovery in the true-acupoint group.

"These [brain] modulations may improve motor initiation, execution, control, and coordination, representing a potential central mechanism underlying acupuncture's therapeutic effect," the authors wrote.

Yu, X., et al. (2026). Neuroplastic Mechanisms of Acupuncture in Post‐Stroke Motor Recovery: A Randomized Multimodal MRI Trial. CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics. DOI: 10.1002/cns.70955. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cns.70955