Objective The primary study has confirmed that moxibustion preconditioning (MP) had a protective action on rats with adjuvant arthritis (AA). This paper investigated the protective mechanism of MP through an analysis of hypothalamic HSP70. Methods To observe the changes of hypothalamic HSP70 in AA rats before model established, at early stage and secondary stage after model established respectively by using immunohistochemistry, and to analyze these changes with image analysis technique. Results The express...