[Objective]This study aimed to identify the attitudes toward and the perceptions of the interrelation between acupuncture/moxibustion and immune system for clinical acupuncturists in Japan. A questionnaire survey was conducted as the second periodical action of the Immunological Research Committee for Acupuncture and Moxibustion.
[Methods]Clinical acupuncturists in the 43vocational colleges belonging to the Japan College Association of Oriental Medicine and 6 universities having an acupuncturist-education course were surveyed.
[Results]The response rate of this survey was 27.4%(263/960). Fifty six percent of responders expressed a positive view that the acupuncture/moxibustion had therapeutic effect to augment the body defense against infection, and 83%of them had the perception that acupuncture/moxibustion therapy could act as the preventive medicine. However, only 11%of those responders usually carried out the therapeutic evaluations after their treatments, and the other acupuncturists relied their assessment upon the statement from the patients alone.
[Conclusion]From the basic concepts of evidence-based medicine, the present study demonstrates that the urgent introduction of the noninvasive and objective procedure by which acupuncturists assess the degree of immune defense in their clinical institution is important.

The immunological research committee for acupuncture and moxibustion, which was primarily organized in 2004, has investigated previous reports on basic research describing the immunological effect with acupuncture and/or moxibustion treatment.
According to the on-line database, we firstly selected 724 reports by keyword searches, which were finally narrowed down to 52 reports on experimental animal tests and 42 reports on clinical tests (72 English articles and 22 Japanese articles) by careful sorting. Then, we analyzed information such as the condition of acupuncture and/or moxibustion stimulation, subject of the test, and immunological parameter for assessment in the 94 reports.
The findings showed that the previous research was performed under inconsistent methods that were difficult to organize, and it is suggested that more comparable and reproducible experiments are required for the progression of this research area in the future.