Acupuncture is an effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Manual- or electro-acupuncture treatment reliefs both motor symptoms and many non-motor symptoms. There have been a few clinical studies of acupuncture therapy for Parkinson’s in the past 10 years. Although the results are encourage but remain inconclusive due to many factors such as smaller number of patients recruited, study design with many flaws. Recently, a clinical study, aimed to investigate the efficacy of acupuncture as an alternative therapy for Parkinson’s, has been carried out, with 43 patients with Parkinson’s disease, the largest number of patients recruited in a single study so far. The patients in the treatment group underwent acupuncture treatment twice a week for 8 weeks. The patients in control group did not receive any treatment. The results showed that the PD patients in treatment group experienced significantly greater improvement on the Unified Parkinson’s disease rating scales (UPDRS), including total UPDRS scores and part III scores which assess individual’s motor function such as rigidity, finger tapping, hand movements, arising from chair and gait etc. In addition, patients receiving acupuncture showed a significant improvement on Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI), an assessment about the depression. However, patients in control groups did not show any significant changes in both UPDRS and BDI assessments.
Although the number of patients participated in this clinical study is still quite smaller compared other clinical studies, its results are promising, indicating acupuncture treatment could improve both motor and non-motor symptoms of patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Reference:
SY Cho et al., (2012) Parkinsonism
and Related Disorders 18, 948e952.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22632852
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