New research suggests acupuncture treatment could help alleviate side effects associated with breast cancer treatments; "sham" acupuncture could also provide relief.
The study also calls into question the effectiveness of "fake" acupuncture, and suggests it could hold its own benefits, a Wiley news release reported.
Breast cancer patients that take drugs called aromatase inhibitors tend to experience symptoms such as "joint/muscle pain and stiffness, and menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes," the news release reported.
The research team looked at 47 breast cancer survivors who were on aromatase inhibitors (an enzyme inhibitor that can help post menopausal women produce estrogen) who were struggling with muscle or joint pain.
About half of the patients were given real acupuncture treatment while the other half was given a "fake" procedure that used non-retractable needles and did not hit pressure points.
"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," Ting Bao MD, DAMBA, MS, of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center in Baltimore, said in the news release.
Both groups noticed a relatively equal reduction in symptoms such as hot flashes.
"This is important because other treatments for symptoms often do have side effects, so showing that this treatment works without side effects could be a big improvement in the treatment of cancer survivors," Bao said.
No significant symptoms were reported as a result of either type of acupuncture.
While reviewing their data, the team noticed a greater difference between African American women who received the real treatment and those that underwent sham treatments than in other racial groups. African American women were more likely to benefit from the genuine treatment than the fake procedures.
"This kind of result is not definitive, but it does suggest that we should probably look further into the possibility that acupuncture may work better in some ethnicity groups than others," Bao said.
