A Small Study Indicates Acupuncture Can Benefit COPD Patients

Acupuncture can offer huge benefits for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) sufferers, one small trial suggests. This alternative form of therapy can help reduce breathing difficulty after exertion, which is a great issue among several COPD patients. This disease is actually a blanket term that pertains to a set lung diseases that obstruct respiration.

In an editorial of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, George T. Lewith said that COPD is a condition associated with old age. This disease has really no treatment when in Western conventional medicine. In this study which was conducted in Japan, the researchers gauged the effectiveness of acupuncture on COPD. The study required the participation of 68 adults who all had COPD. They were divided equally into two groups with one group treated with acupuncture for 12 weeks while the other administered with sham (placebo) acupuncture. The placebo treatment used needles that were not meant to actually pierce the skin. All 68 subjects remained on whatever drugs they were previously using.

At the end of the study, the results showed that the members of the group treated with real acupuncture were breathing much easier after walking tests than the members of the sham acupuncture group.

Kyoto University researcher Masao Suzuki, who co-authored the editorial remarked that COPD patients have muscles that are responsible for thoracic movement are significantly fatigued, which may be the underlying reason for the disease.

Mr. Suzuki said that acupuncture helps relax these muscles and thus normalizes function of the muscles resulting in better breathing.

This study may have shown promising results but some experts agree it need to be followed-up by more studies in order to validate once and for all those results. The above study involved just a small sample size and studies involving a large number of participants are needed to confirm the results. Moreover, while the subjects were masked, the practitioners who administered the acupuncture treatment were not, and this might have an influence on the outcomes based on their attitudes,” the authors of the study added.

Mr Lewith stated that COPD is a very hard condition to manage and treat and the outcome of the above study seem like a breakthrough indeed, but one study is not proof enough to change how the disease is managed.

According to the Mayo Clinic, bronchodilators that have quick acting effects are the most common forms of conventional COPD treatment since they result in the prompt alleviation of the symptoms, especially, the symptom of shortness of breath.

There are about 65 million individuals all over the world suffering from moderate to extreme case of COPD based on information from the WHO (World Health Organization). The WHO also revealed that within the next 10 years, the number of COPD cases will rise by more than 30% mainly due to outdoor and indoor air pollution.

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