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- Status: Published
Methods: Three databases were used to search for papers published after 2010 until October 2019 discussing obesity, overweight and TCM. No forms of Chinese medicine were excluded from the search. Studies were excluded if they did not meet the date criteria or if they overlapped with papers found in other databases.
Results: Six of the selected papers covered acupuncture (electro, balance or catgut embedding acupuncture methods) either jointly with other treatments or alone, one exclusively on moxibustion and three studies on three different types of TCM herbal medicine. Each study showed a statistically significant effect on body mass index (BMI) value decrease or total weight loss (TWL). The six acupuncture papers all showed statistical significance at the 95% CI against control groups (sham acupuncture or no acupuncture) and against before-treatment BMI values or TWL values.
Conclusion: Of the treatments reviewed, almost all acupuncture studies were shown to be consistently effective in treating overweight or obese individuals within this selection of studies, as well as in another meta-analysis. This may be due to acupuncture’s ties to a neuroendocrine mechanism. Future studies should further explore the neuroendocrine connection between acupuncture and weight loss. Herbal medication was also shown to have a significant effect in reducing weight in each study; however, two studies used mice or rats as subjects, therefore understanding the effects on human subjects is limited.
Thousands of mothers are at risk of transmitting mitochondrial diseases to their offspring each year, with the most severe form of these diseases being fatal [1]. With no cure, transmission prevention is the only current hope for decreasing the disease incidence. Current methods of prevention rely on low mutant maternal mitochondrial DNA levels, while those with levels close to or above threshold (>60%) are still at a very high risk of transmission [2]. Two novel approaches may offer hope for preventing and treating mitochondrial disease: mitochondrial replacement therapy, and CRISPR/Cas9. Mitochondrial replacement therapy has emerged as a promising tool that has the potential to prevent transmission in patients with higher mutant mitochondrial loads. This method is the subject of many ethical concerns due its use of a donor embryo to transplant the patient’s nuclear DNA; however, it has ultimately been approved for use in the United Kingdom and was recently declared ethically permissible by the FDA. The leading-edge CRISPR/Cas9 technology exploits the principles of bacterial immune function to target and remove specific sequences of mutated DNA. This may have potential in treating individuals with disease caused by mutant mitochondrial DNA. As the technology progresses, it is important that the ethical considerations herein emerge and become more established. The purpose of this review is to discuss current research surrounding the procedure and efficacy of the techniques, compare the ethical concerns of each approach, and look into the future of mitochondrial gene replacement therapy.