Thinking on functional mechanism of acupuncture for inflammatory bowel diseases based on Metabolomics

Acupuncture has a good therapeutic effect in treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), but its functional mechanism has not been systematically explained. Metabolomics is the scientific study of dynamic chemical processes involving metabolites as well as metabolic response of living organisms. Metabolomics, a research method with integrity and dynamics, corresponds to the overall regulatory effect of acupuncture and is in line with the overall concept of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and the concept of homeostasis. In the recent years, metabolomics has been extensively applied to the clinical and experimental study of IBD, and its potential applied value has been unanimously acknowledged by the researchers. In this article, the application status of metabolomics in acupuncture is summarized, and the research ideas to study the mechanism of acupuncture in the regulation and control of IBD by metabolomics are preliminarily explored.