Acupuncture for Pain and Salivary Stress Markers

They use salivary cortisol and IgA to track efficacy of acupuncture for shoulder pain.  Nice!
Multivariate quantification of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment in combination with questionnaire and salivary stress markers.
Yakugaku Zasshi. 2014;134(5):655-63Matzno S1, Ikeda C, Watanabe K, Nakamura R, Takamatsu H, Haginaka J, Matsuyama K
Abstract
Pain and stress alleviation after acupuncture treatment was assessed in this study. Patients responded to a questionnaire designed to determine the amount of stress they were experiencing, and data were obtained for patient salivary amylase, cortisol, secretary IgA (s-IgA), and leptin receptor (OBRb). As a part of this study on acute pain, 6 factors were extracted from the questionnaire. The second factor (pain removal) was well correlated with salivary amylase activity in patients with cervico-omo-brachial syndrome. An evaluation of cumulative acupuncture treatments showed that salivary cortisol increased and s-IgA decreased. In addition, a decreased s-IgA level significantly correlated with chronic pain removal. The questionnaire correlated well with measurements of salivary markers suggesting that they can be taken as indices of therapeutic efficacy in acupuncture treatment.