This blog is to share the latest research and development of acupuncture and raise the awareness of alternative treatments for your conditions, and is for information only.

Wednesday, 31 August 2016

Acupuncture could become a valuable addition to oncology

Recently a group of scientists and clinicians in Poland studies many clinical trials about the effectiveness of acupuncture therapy to cancer patients with different conditions. They suggest that acupuncture could be a route addition to cancer treatment. The study was published in journal of Contemporary Oncology.

The scientists and clinicians looked at effect of acupuncture on different conditions including nausea and chemotherapy-induced vomiting, cancer pain, chemotherapy-induced leucopoenia, radiation induced xerostomia, hot flushes, anxiety-like behavioural and stress, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, cancer-related fatigue, hiccup and lymphoedema. They found that acupuncture treatment improved all symptoms mentioned above. The improvement was rated from moderate to significant.

They also summarized the mechanisms of action of acupuncture ranging from anti-inflammation, neural modulation, regulation of neuropeptide release and modulating multi-signal pathways related to the activities of immune systems.

The authors suggest that acupuncture could a part of route modality of modern oncology although more studies about procedural methodology are needed.

Reference
A Kilian-Kita et al., Acupuncture: could it become everyday practice in oncology? Contemp Oncol (Pozn) 2016; 20 (2): 119–123.   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4925730/

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