Association of acupuncture timing and treatment intensity with short-term functional recovery in stroke…

Cohort studyFrontiers in neurology· 2026

Association of acupuncture timing and treatment intensity with short-term functional recovery in stroke rehabilitation inpatients: a retrospective cohort and prediction study.

Yanling Gao, Jiajun Kang, Ting Rao … Qingyue Dai

Hospital MedicineCohort studyTreatmentQ2IF 3.1

Starting acupuncture sooner after stroke was linked to bigger Barthel Index gains

Association of acupuncture timing and treatment intensity with short-term functional recovery in stroke rehabilitation inpatients: a retrospective cohort and prediction study.

Yanling Gao … Qingyue Dai

Frontiers in neurology · 2026

Background

In inpatient stroke rehabilitation settings where acupuncture is part of routine care, several practical questions arise: when treatment should begin, how intensively it should be delivered, and whether data on treatment patterns can help guide individualized discharge planning.

Methods

We analyzed 1,048 stroke rehabilitation inpatients who received acupuncture during hospitalization.

Results

earlier acupuncture start predicted larger Barthel gains

OR 1.39 (95% CI 1.19 to 1.62)

null 1

1.19

1.62

CI excludes the null - significant

More results

Patients improved in Barthel Index (13.74 +/- 6.57), Fugl-Meyer Assessment upper extremity (10.18 +/- 5.86), FMA-LE (4.90 +/- 3.08), and FMA-balance (2.85 +/- 2.22).

Because these instruments have different score ranges, standardized effect sizes and recovery ratios were used to support cross-domain interpretation.

More results

Left-versus-right interactions were not significant; stroke-type interaction was evident only for timing with FMA-LE gain ( p = 0.012).

In prediction benchmarks, LARE had AUROC 0.804 (95% bootstrap CI 0.778-0.829) for home discharge but was not statistically distinguishable from CatBoost or RandomForest; Barthel Index-gain regression was moderate.

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Conclusion · 1 of 2

Within this acupuncture-treated inpatient cohort, earlier initiation, weekly frequency, and total exposure were associated with short-term ADL and motor recovery.

Conclusion · 2 of 2

These findings are consistent with timing- and dose-response hypotheses from the broader rehabilitation and acupuncture literature, but prospective studies with non-acupuncture comparators and acute neurologic severity measures are needed before causal efficacy claims can be made.

Association of acupuncture timing and treatment intensity with short-term functional recovery in stroke rehabilitation inpatients: a retrospective cohort and prediction study.

Association of acupuncture timing and treatment intensity with short-term functional recovery in stroke rehabilitation inpatients: a retrospective cohort and prediction study.

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