Acupuncture helps reduce muscle hypertonicity, relieve muscle tension, pain and discomfort in children with cerebral palsy

In the United States, clinical studies of acupuncture treatment for children with cerebral palsy were performed by researchers at the University of Arizona.

In a randomized controlled study to assess effect of acupuncture on motor function of children, aged 12 to 72 months, with cerebral palsy spasticity was performed by the Health Sciences Centre. Following 16 weeks of acupuncture treatment, children with cerebral palsy spasticity displayed marked improvement in their gross motor function compared with control group. The improvement in acupuncture treated children exceeded researcher’s expectations. The study suggested that acupuncture could help children improve their ability to function physically.

Another study was performed by the Paediatrics Department. The study involved in several children and was to assess what extent of muscle hypertonicity can be relieved by auricular acupuncture. It was found that auricular treatment has particular therapeutic effect on one child. After just a few treatments it was noted that his muscles were not as hard as they were before treatment. By the end of 16 treatments with the ear probe, the child’s limb thrusting was reduced by 50 percent, a significant improvement.

There studies suggest that acupuncture is promising to improve symptoms of cerebral palsy.  

Reference:

Downer J, Acupuncture for cerebral palsy. Acupuncture, January 2014.  
http://www.stratfordacupuncture.com/acupuncture-cerebral-palsy/

Acupuncture accelerated symptom improvement in cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy is used to describe a wide range of neurological disorders that mainly affect movement and coordination.  It is caused by the damage of parts of brain responsible for movement controlling and can occur before, during and after birth. The main symptoms include muscle stiffness and weakness, involuntary movement and problems with balance and coordination. There is currently no known cure for it. The standard treatments are physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy and medications to relax muscles and ease pain.

Although acupuncture is used to treat many symptoms of cerebral palsy there are few studies regarding acupuncture’s effectiveness on cerebral palsy. A recent study published by Chinese researchers reported acupuncture, in addition to traditional rehabilitative training, significantly improved the effectiveness of treatment for children with cerebral palsy. The effective rate increased from 52% for the group (100 patients) who only received rehabilitative training to 84% for the group (100 patients) who received acupuncture and rehabilitative training. CT and SPECT brain neuroimaging confirmed that acupuncture group showed significantly higher improvement rates in brain development, neuronal brain metabolic functions and reductions of brain atrophy.

The authors conclude that “The forward curative effect of acupuncture combined with rehabilitation training was significantly better than the rehabilitation training alone.”

Reference:

Liu ZH et al., Clinical observation on treatment of clearing the Governor Vessel and refreshing the mind needling in neural development and remediation of children with cerebral palsy. Chin J Integr Med. 2013, 19(7):505-9. doi: 10.1007/s11655-013-1504-9.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23818202