Objective To investigate the effects and mechanism of acupuncture “Neiguan”，“Xinshu” acupoints for treating coronary atherosclerotic heart disease，and provide experimental support for the clinical treatment and the combination effect of acupoints theory. Methods 75 clean healthy male Wistar rats，15 of them were randomly selected as the normal control group，and the remaining rats were fed with a high fat diet to duplicate the atherosclerotic coronary heart disease model，at the beginning of this，chose 15 of them as the acupuncture preconditing group randomly，after the model successfully duplicated，the rats were randomly divided into model group，acupuncture group，and the positive control group，in each group，15 rats were counted to make an analysis. In the 2 acupuncture group，“Neiguan” and “Xinshu” were selected to acupuncture，and in the drug control group，rats were received atorvastatin suspension orally 2 weeks. At the end of the experiment，To take the aortic arch organization，fixed at 10% of formaldehyde solution，and embedded in paraffin，cut into slices in the same section，and hematoxylin-eosin（HE）staining such slices，then to observed the pathological morphological change and to detect the expression of MMP-9 in the sample of coronary arterial tissue by PCR. Results After model duplicated successfully，there were changes in vascular inner membrane of intima rough，fiber cap formation，and foam cell deposit in the aortic tissue of rats in model control group. Compared with in model control group，such items in acupuncture predicting group，acupuncture treating group and drugs control group were all decreased significantly（P<0.01）. Compared with in acupuncture treating group，the atovastatin could decrease expression of MMP-9 significantly（P<0.05）. Compared with in acupuncture predicting group，the atovastatin could decrease expression of MMP-9 not significantly （P>0.05）. Conclusion Acupuncture at “Neiguan” and “Xinshu” acupoints can effectively prevent and treat CHD through reduce the expression of MMP-9 in coronary arterial tissue，but the effect of acupuncture does not superior to the drugs of torvastatin.