Acupuncture treatment greatly improves chronic
non-responding anxiety symptoms and its therapeutic effect is sustainable up to
10 weeks after treatment, according to a randomized controlled trial published
in the Journal of Acupunct Medicine.
Chronic non-responding anxiety referred to the conditions
when the symptoms of anxiety patients lasted more than one year and responded
poorly to at least two forms of medications and other therapies such as
cognitive behavioural therapy and bibliotherapy. These patients made heavy use
of health service with little beneficial outcome. It is urgent to find
alternative treatment to reduce the suffering of those patients.
Dr. Errington-Evans in Wales, Britain carried out a
randomized controlled clinical study to assess the effect of acupuncture on
patients with chronic non-responding anxiety symptoms. Forty patients matched
with criteria were randomized into two groups. Group one patients (n=25) were
give acupuncture treatment at acupoints PC6, HT7 and LR3 for 30 min once a weeks for 10 weeks. Patients
in group 2 were not given acupuncture as control. The State and Trait Anxiety
Inventory were used to monitor the changes in symptom intensity before and
after acupuncture treatment.
At the end of acupuncture State Anxiety score in acupuncture group decreased from 57.7 to
38.8, while the scores in control group only shifted from 61.5 to 60.6. The
similar changes was found in Trait Anxiety scores. This showed acupuncture
significantly improved anxiety symptoms of those patients. Patients treated with acupuncture felt that they were
more prepared to cope with day-to-day activities they had wanted to enjoy prior
to the sessions. They identified that acupuncture is an important factor in
their new attitude. The follow-up found that improvement of symptoms were
maintained 10 weeks after acupuncture. No side effect was reported.
The study suggests that acupuncture is a very effective
alternative therapy for patients with chronic non-responding anxiety symptoms.
Reference:
Errington-Evans N, Randomised
controlled trial on the use of acupuncture in adults with chronic,
non-responding anxiety symptoms. Acupunct Med doi:10.1136/ acupmed-2014-010524. http://aim.bmj.com/content/early/2015/01/16/acupmed-2014-010524.abstract
No comments:
Post a Comment