Methods
KOA knee pain, knee pain, KOA
This study recruited 180 KOA patients with knee pain and 41 healthy controls (HCs). Individuals with KOA knee pain were divided randomly into groups of verum acupuncture (VA), sham acupuncture (SA), celecoxib (SC), placebo (PB), and waiting list (WT), with 36 patients in each group. VA and SA groups included ten sessions of puncturing acupoints or puncturing non‐acupoints acupuncture treatment for two successive weeks. Celecoxib capsules were continuously given orally to patients in the SC group at a dosage of 200 mg daily for 2 weeks. In the PB group, patients received a placebo capsule once a day for 2 weeks at the same dosage as celecoxib capsules. In the WL group, patients did not receive any treatment. Patients underwent a resting‐state BOLD‐fMRI scan pre‐ and post‐receiving the therapy, whereas HCs only underwent a baseline scan. Seed (ventrolateral periaqueductal gray, vlPAG, a key node in DPMS) based resting‐state functional connectivity (rs‐FC) was applied in the data analysis.