Acupuncture reduces pain in breast cancer patients, study

A new study shows acupuncture helped relieve joint pain caused by a specific breast cancer medication, researchers announced at a medical conference last week.

Breast cancer patients who underwent acupuncture for joint pain and stiffness reported having less pain for six months compared to a placebo group and another that had no treatment at all.

The study findings were announced last week at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and in a news release published on the science news website EurekAlert.

“This work strongly shows that true acupuncture results in better outcomes for women,” Dr. Katherine Crew said in a news release. A co-investigator of the study, she is also the director of the Clinical Breast Cancer Prevention Program at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

“I expect this work to influence medical practice, as well as insurers’ willingness to reimburse for acupuncture during [aromatase inhibitors] treatment.”

Aromatase inhibitors are prescribed to tens of thousands of breast cancer patients to help stop tumor growth. It stops the production of estrogen, starving cancer cells that feed off the hormone.

Yet the drugs can cause significant pain for women, making it difficult to walk, sit, climb stairs, drive or even type. Some women are prescribed the medication for up to 10 years.

Conventional therapies include opioids for pain. Last year, another study showed that an anti-anxiety medication showed promise in alleviating symptoms, according to the news release.

Acupuncture is a staple of Chinese medicine, the practice of inserting tiny needles into pressure points and other specific areas on the body to stimulate a response. It’s an area of treatment that shows promise in relieving multiple types of pain, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health.

But the practice isn’t standardized in the U.S. making recommendations to specialists difficult.

In the latest study evaluating acupuncture, researchers from SWOG – the global cancer clinical trials network funded by the National Cancer Institute – recruited 226 patients from 11 cancer centers and divided them into three groups.

The first would receive the normal acupuncture treatment, the second would receive a “sham” treatment – they would get needles inserted into different, non-therapeutic locations on the body, and a third group received no treatment at all.

After twice-weekly sessions for six weeks, and another six weeks of maintenance therapy, the acupuncture group had the best results for pain relief.