OBJECTIVETo observe the influence of time factors on acupoint sticking therapy for preventing and treating bronchial asthma.

METHODSSeventy-one cases were randomly divided into a dog days group (n= 30), a Sanjiu days group (n=21) and a daily days group (n=20). They were all treated with ginger moxibustion plus acupoint sticking of Chinese medicine at Dazhui (GV 14) and Feishu (BL 13) etc. This treatment was applied once at the beginning of the first dog days, the middle dog days and the last dog days respectively in the dog days group, and once at the beginning of the first nine days, the middle nine days and the last nine days in coldest days of winter respectively in the Sanjiu days group, and once every other 10 days during 30 days except the dog days or the Sanjiu days in the daily days group. Their therapeutic effects and quality of life and changes of serum level of interleukin 13 (IL-13) were observed.

RESULTSThe total effective rate of the dog days group was 83.3% (25/30), the Sanjiu days group and the daily days group were 61.9% (13/21) and 65.0% (15/20) respectively, with no significant differences among three groups (all P>0.05). After treatment, there were no significant differences in quality of life and changes of serum level of IL-13 among three groups, but there were significant differences between before and after treatment (P<0.01, P<0.001).

CONCLUSIONAcupoint sticking is an effective therapy for bronchial asthma. It can be practiced in the whole year for the result of this study that medicines and acupoints are the leading factors of this therapy and the time factors have no influence on therapeutic effect.