Acupuncture is widely used in the treatment of ischemic diseases of the central nervous system in different clinical stages and has achieved a good clinical effect. The current research showed that acupuncture can improve cerebral blood flow perfusion via increasing blood flow volume, blood flow velocity, the levels of vasomotor substances and reduction of blood viscosity and erythrocyte aggregation index. In recent years, many studies focused on the pathophysiological mechanism of acupuncture in improving cerebral ischemia via triggering the cholinergic vasodilatation, up-regulation of expression of vascular-related proteins and genes，attenuation of inflammatory reaction, etc. Currently, the methods for evaluating the effect of acupuncture are mostly noninvasive functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy subjects. Future studies should include united selection of acupoints and acupuncture needle manipulations, more reasonable combination of different acupoints, united outcome evaluative standards, better repeatability, employment of big data, etc.
Keywords: Acupuncture; Central nervous system; Hypoxia-ischemia; Pathophysiological mechanism.