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Acupuncture relieves side effects of cancer chemotherapy |
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Health
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Written by Danny Penman
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 Acupuncture helps relieve one of the worst side-effects of cancer chemotherapy according to a study carried out at the University of Manchester.
Crippling and long lasting fatigue is one the most common side-effects of chemotherapy. Acupuncture reduces this side-effect by over a third according to the study and radically improves a patient’s quality of life.
“People felt better and had more energy after the acupuncture,” says Alexander Molassiotis, Professor of Cancer and Supportive Care at the University of Manchester. “Patients had the energy to walk to the shops and to socialise so their quality of life improved significantly.”
Numerous trials have shown that acupuncture appears to work for a variety of conditions. Last year two studies demonstrated that acupuncture may help boost fertility after IVF, although a third failed to demonstrate an effect. The US National Institutes of Health says that acupuncture is an effective treatment for nausea caused by anaesthesia and cancer chemotherapy as well as dental pain following surgery.
In this latest study, 47 patients suffering from moderate to severe fatigue were enrolled in a randomised placebo controlled trial at Manchester’s Christie Hospital. The patients were randomly seeded into one of three groups to receive either acupuncture, acupressure or sham acupressure.
The acupuncture group received six 20 minute sessions spread over three weeks. During these sessions the characteristic thin needles were inserted about two centimetres into the patients’ skin at three points. The points were selected for their alleged propensity to boost energy levels and reduce fatigue.
Patients in the acupressure group were taught to massage the same acupuncture points for one minute a day for two weeks. The sham acupressure group was taught the same technique but told to massage different points on the body not associated with energy and fatigue.
Wellbeing and energy levels were assessed using the standard Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory. Patients in the acupuncture group reported a 36 percent improvement in fatigue levels whilst those in the acupressure group improved by 19 percent . Those in the sham acupressure group reported a 0.6 percent improvement.
Alexander Molassiotis is certain that the improvements were not down to the placebo effect. “Our trial was able to take this into account,” he says.
He has now planning a much larger trial at the Royal Marsden and Christie Hospitals funded by the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer.
Kat Arney, of Cancer Research UK, welcomes the new findings but is more cautious about their significance.
She says: “This was a very small study and bigger randomised controlled trials are needed before we know for sure if acupuncture or acupressure is effective at relieving some of the side effects of cancer therapy.”
Journal reference: Complementary Therapies in Medicine doi:10.1016/j.ctim.2006.09.009
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