How acupuncture helps breast cancer patients

Women undergoing breast cancer may benefit from acupuncture to help relieve the side-effects of treatment, researchers have reported.

The acupuncture does not need to be genuine – but the patient needs to believe it is acupuncture, researchers said.

In the study, reported in the journal Cancer, acupuncture was used to relieve women suffering from joint and muscle pain and stiffness and hot flushes.

The acupuncture itself caused no side-effects.

In the study, researchers set out to compare real acupuncture with a sham treatment, which used retractable needs and false acupuncture points.

Some 47 women took part in the study. The women were being treated with aromatase inhibitors. Half had real treatment and the other half fake treatment.

The researchers found women reported improvements in their symptoms regardless of which kind of treatment they underwent.

Researcher Dr Ting Bao, of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center, Baltimore, USA, said: "It could be that there is no difference, or it could be that in this small trial we just didn’t have enough patients to detect a significant difference."

Dr Bao added: "Showing that this treatment works without side effects could be a big improvement in the treatment of cancer survivors."

Professor Albert Reece, dean of the University of Maryland medical school, added: "Aromatase inhibitors are a very important advance in treating postmenopausal women with oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, but side effects may cause some patients to stop treatment.

"This study led by Dr Bao, an oncologist and medical acupuncturist, offers some intriguing evidence that acupuncture – even sham acupuncture – may be helpful in alleviating some side effects. These findings warrant further investigation."

Patient reported outcomes in women with breast cancer enrolled in a dual-center double blind randomized controlled trial assessing the effect of acupuncture in reducing aromatase inhibitor-induced musculoskeletal symptoms. Cancer 23 December 2013; doi: 10.1002/cncr.28352 [abstract]