It’s National Endometriosis Awareness Month. Did you know that acupuncture is a safe and effective treatment for the alleviation of endometriosis?
Researchers at Tongji University hospital compared acupuncture with standard drug therapy. Patients receiving acupuncture achieved a 92.0% total effective rate. Patients receiving mifepristone achieved a 52.0% total effective rate. Mifepristone, also known by its trademarked name RU-486, is a synthetic steroid that inhibits progesterone action and is used for the treatment endometriosis and also for inducing abortions. Notably, low doses of “mifepristone inhibits endometrial proliferation (Narvekar et al.).” Acupuncture reduced pain levels more significantly than the medication. Relapse rates were less in the acupuncture group than the drug group. One year follow-up examinations determined that the recurrence rate for the group receiving drug therapy was 36%. By comparison, the group receiving acupuncture had an endometriosis recurrence rate of 20%. Pelvic mass sizes and proliferation lessened more significantly in the acupuncture treatment group than in the drug group. The findings were detected and verified with B-scan ultrasonography.
References
Shen Q, Lu J. Clinical Observation of Acupuncture-moxibustion for Endometriosis [J]. Shanghai Journal of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, 2017, 36 (6). Narvekar, Nitish, Sharon Cameron, Hilary OD Critchley, Suiqing Lin, Linan Cheng, and David T. Baird. "Low-dose mifepristone inhibits endometrial proliferation and up-regulates androgen receptor." The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 89, no. 5 (2004): 2491-2497.