Fibromyalgia patients treated with six sessions of acupuncture experienced significant symptomatic improvement compared to a group given simulated acupuncture sessions according to a new Mayo Clinic study.
The findings will be presented at the 11th World Congress of the International Association for the Study of Pain in Sydney, Australia.
"This study shows there is something real about acupuncture and its effects on Fibromyalgia," says David Martin, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and the study's lead investigator. "Our study was performed on patients with moderate to severe Fibromyalgia. It's my speculation that if acupuncture works for these patients with recalcitrant Fibromyalgia -- where previous treatments had not provided satisfactory relief -- it would likely work for many of the millions of Fibromyalgia patients."
Acupuncture could fill a gap in available therapies for the disease as something additive to what medications already can provide, says Dr. Martin. "There's not a cure available, so patients are often left somewhat frustrated by continuing pain and fatigue," he says. "Acupuncture is one of the few things shown to be effective for these symptoms. It may be particularly attractive to patients who are unable to take medications because of intolerable side effects."
The study, conducted by Mayo Clinic physicians specializing in pain management, included 50 patients diagnosed with Fibromyalgia for whom other symptom-relief treatments were ineffective. The patients were randomly assigned to receive acupuncture or simulated acupuncture and were not informed which treatment they received; these treatments were administered in six sessions over two to three weeks.
All patients were given questionnaires before treatment, immediately after treatment, and at one and seven months after treatment to determine the degree of symptoms they experienced and how the disease affected their daily lives.
Patients who received acupuncture experienced minimal side effects. Following treatments, symptoms of pain, fatigue and anxiety were most significantly improved in the patients given acupuncture. At seven months post-treatment, the patients' symptoms of pain, anxiety and fatigue had returned to baseline levels; the patients experienced the largest improvement at one month following treatment.
"We expected the acupuncture to improve the pain," says Dr. Martin. "We didn't really expect the largest benefit to be in fatigue or anxiety."
Dr. Martin hypothesizes that acupuncture affects symptoms such as anxiety and fatigue because it may target the root cause and not the daily symptoms of Fibromyalgia. "In a Western view of medicine, we're modulating sensory input through acupuncture," he says. "Whenever there's an input to the nervous system, it responds and adapts to the input -- sometimes in ways that are beneficial to patients. This is not so different from the traditional Eastern explanation of acupuncture that describes needles as altering the flow of life energy, called Qi."
The Mayo Clinic researchers noted that although the patients saw improvement in symptoms which had reduced activity level, physical function did not increase even though the patients were less tired and felt less pain. "This doesn't surprise me, as we see this pattern in other chronic pain problems: you can relieve pain, but it's a lot harder to prompt activity changes," says Dr. Martin. "A chronically ill person needs more than symptom relief to resume a normal lifestyle. We're now beginning to work on that problem."