Acupuncture
plus anti-parkinsonian drug significantly improved motor symptoms and non-motor
symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s, and particularly efficacious at early
stage of Parkinson’s. Acupuncture add-on treatment also markedly reduced nitric
oxide level serum compared with anti-parkinsonian drug along group. A clinical
study was recently reported in the journal of Evidence-Based Complementary and
Alternative Medicine.
Parkinson’s
is caused by the loss of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in central
nervous system and is characterized by the motor dysfunction such as bradykinesia,
resting tremor, rigidity and gait and postural imbalance. Although many
non-motor symptoms developed before or parallelly with motor symptoms they were
not always diagnosed and properly treated. Anti-parkinsonian drugs such as
dopamine agonists are used to treat motor-related symptoms and have some severe
side effects e.g. involuntary movement; while many non-motor symptoms were left
untreated or mistreated, leading to significantly downgrad the quality of life
of the PD patients.
Acupuncture
has been used to treat resting tremor and many motor and non-motor symptoms.
However efficacy of acupuncture treatment in Parkinson’s is inconsistent and
controversial.
Recently
researchers led by Dr. Z Wei in China carried out a clinical study to assess
the efficacy of acupuncture add-on in PD in particular to evaluate on both
motor and non-motor effect. Fifty patients with Parkinson’s treated with
levedopa were divided into acupuncture add-on group (n=30) and drug alone group
(n=20). While all patients were continually taking their route
anti-parkinsonian drug levedopa, patients in acupuncture add-on group were
given electroacupuncture at bilateral GF20, LI4 and central DU14 and DU16 for
30 each time, once every 3 days. Ten-treatment was a course and two course in
total within 2 months. Outcome measures for both motor-function (UPDRS III
scores) and non-motor conditions such as depression and sleep disturbance and
questionnaire for quality of life were assessed before and after the treatment.
Data
showed that acupuncture add-on treatment significantly improved many motor
functions such tremor, bradykinesia, and rigidity and non-motor conditions e.g.
depression and sleep disturbance compared with drug alone group. Biochemical
studies revealed that many inflammatory-related markers such as TNF-alpha,IL-1beta,and PGE2 were
significantly reduced in acupuncture add-on group compared with drug alone
group.
Authors
concluded that acupuncture add-on is effective on most motor symptoms and some
non-motor symptoms in particular at the early stage of Parkinson’s.
Anti-inflammatory effect may be the underlying mechanism of acupuncture add-on
treatment in Parkinson’s.
Reference:
F
Wang et al., Effect and Potential Mechanism of Electroacupuncture Add-On
Treatment in Patients
with Parkinson’s Disease. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative
Medicine, Volume 2015, Article ID 692795,11 pages. http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2015/692795/
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