Acupuncture improves chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome symptoms
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
A recent study showed that multiple sessions of acupuncture therapy led to greater improvements in symptoms of moderate to severe chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome compared with sham therapy.
Improvements in pain, voiding dysfunction, anxiety, depression and quality of life lasted up to 24 weeks following acupuncture treatment, according to the results, which were published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
“Pharmacologic therapy has so far failed to reveal universal benefits in patients with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome,” Zhishun Liu, MD, PhD, a professor in the department of acupuncture and moxibustion at Guang’anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, told Healio Primary Care. “The evidence for acupuncture is limited, although it is also recommended in current guidelines.”
Liu and colleagues conducted a multicenter, randomized, sham-controlled trial in 10 tertiary hospitals in China. They randomly assigned 440 men with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome in a 1:1 ratio to receive 20 sessions of acupuncture or sham therapy over 8 weeks. The participants were eligible for the trial if they had experienced pain or discomfort in the pelvic region for at least 3 out of the previous 6 months without infection, were aged 18 to 50 years and reported a total score of at least 15 on the NIH Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (CPSI).
Liu and colleagues evaluated participants for pain, urinary function, quality of life and erectile function. They followed the participants for 24 weeks after treatment. The primary outcome was the proportion of participants who had a reduction of at least six points from baseline in the NIH-CPSI total score at weeks 8 and 32.
The men who received the acupuncture therapy had a mean age of 35.5 years and a mean baseline NIH-CPSI score of 31. The men who received the sham therapy had a mean age of 36.1 years and a mean baseline NIH-CPSI score of 31.4.
Overall, 414 of the 440 men completed the trial, with 94.1% of men in the acupuncture group and 94.6% in the sham group attending at least 16 sessions.
At week 8, the proportion of responders was 60.6% in the acupuncture group and 36.8% in the sham group, yielding a 21.6 adjusted difference in percentage points (adjusted OR = 2.6; 95% CI, 1.8-4), according to the researchers. At week 32, the proportion of responders was 61.5% in the acupuncture group and 38.3% in the sham group, yielding a 21.1 adjusted difference in percentage points (aOR = 2.6; 95% CI, 1.7-3.9).
Adverse events were more common among men who received acupuncture than sham therapy (9.1% vs. 6.4%), but the researchers reported that there were no serious adverse events in either cohort. Also, there was no significant difference in changes in erectile function at any time point or average urinary flow rates at week 8, according to Liu and colleagues.
“Acupuncture is an effective therapy for [chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome]. Physicians are suggested to recommend it to their patients in clinic,” Liu said. “We believe that acupuncture is also effective for female patients with pelvic pain, although the evidence is insufficient at present. A randomized controlled trial is on the march to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture for pelvic pain among females.”
Perspective
Back to Top
Anita Gupta, DO, PharmD, MPP
Despite the variety of effective treatments, women often suffer unnecessarily from painful conditions ranging from backaches to pain after cancer surgery. Women also treat their pain with medications that may be ineffective and possibly harmful.
This new research on acupuncture therapy sheds new light on how research is required to investigate women's health and pain for these types of therapies and how they may have the potential to benefit painful conditions. In addition, acupuncture therapy should be researched to determine if it has the potential to improve not only painful conditions for women but also if it has the potential to improve quality of life, depression and other mental health conditions that often coexist with painful conditions.
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts