Analysis of Acupoint Selection Rules for Guasha Treatment of Primary Headaches Based on Data Mining [Response to Letter]

Dear editor

We are very grateful to Tianai Shi and others for their strong interest in this study. In order to enhance the accuracy and impact of the research, we responded to the questions they raised.

Firstly, the most representative and comprehensive databases in Chinese databases include CNKI, Wanfang, and Sinomed, with relatively few Chongqing VIP databases. But with a more comprehensive search attitude, we agree to include it in the VIP database. After conducting a supplementary search in the VIP database, we found that there are no literature that needs to be supplemented.

Secondly, there are many subtypes of primary headache, and the differences between different subtypes are obvious. We cannot guarantee that retrieving subtypes separately will not reduce the sensitivity of the research results. In addition, we pursued a more widely applicable acupoint selection pattern, so we did not search for subtypes separately. Finally, through the included articles, it can be found that there is little mention of specific subtypes in these literature, which is also an area where the quality of traditional Chinese medicine literature needs to be improved. Due to the fact that this study belongs to a secondary research, which requires analysis based on previous research results, there are some imperfections, but this is limited to the content presented in the original research.

Thirdly, we have not excluded, nor do we wish to exclude, studies with poorer results compared to the control group. In fact, the studies we included all showed that guasha has a good therapeutic effect on intervening in primary headaches. Regarding the standards for quality evaluation, we select the corresponding evaluation tools based on the research type of the original literature for evaluation.¹ In scraping therapy, meridians are an important concept. We have sorted out the relevant content of meridians and acupoints in Table 2 and analyzed them in the discussion.

Pilot studies, empirical reports, and case reports, although not routine randomized controlled trials, are all small-scale clinical studies.

Finally, we believe that the process of acupoint extraction has been written according to the paradigm of data mining articles.

In summary, we greatly appreciate the comments provided by Shi et al on this study. We believe that this is a favorable situation for promoting the development of traditional Chinese medicine. With the attitude of mutual learning and communication, we also look forward to more high-quality research results in this field.