Traditional Chinese medicine practices combined with acupuncture in conjunction with standard treatments may be more effective at relieving symptoms in myasthenia gravis (MG) patients than traditional drug therapy alone.
That is according to “Acupuncture treatment for myasthenia gravis: a systematic review and meta-analysis” was published. medicine. Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine technique that involves inserting needles into specific areas of the body and then burning small amounts of mugwort, a flowering plant native to Europe, Asia, and some parts of North America.
Now, a Chinese research team has combined data from 11 studies testing acupuncture treatment for MG patients and collectively analyzed the data to determine how effective traditional interventions are for this autoimmune disease. was evaluated.
“In recent years, many studies have been conducted on the treatment of MG in traditional Chinese medicine,” the researchers said, adding that acupuncture is one of the “commonly used external treatments for MG” in traditional Chinese medicine. “It is one of the laws.” The 11 studies included data from 658 patients with MG.
MG symptoms can be alleviated with acupuncture
In each study, about half of the participants were treated with standard Western medications recommended by guidelines, such as the corticosteroid prednisone, and served as a control group. The other half received acupuncture treatment in addition to standard Western treatment.
Those treated with traditional Chinese medicine were more than three times more likely to report symptom relief.
“The results showed that acupuncture treatment for MG had a significant clinical effect and could significantly improve the symptoms of myasthenia,” the researchers wrote.
Traditional Chinese therapy led to significant improvements in MG clinical absolute scores, a measure of relative disease severity. However, another measure of MG severity called the MG quantitative score showed no statistically significant difference between the two treatment groups.
Acupuncture treatment also did not significantly change levels of interleukin-6 receptors, protein receptors for inflammatory molecules involved in the autoimmune attack that causes MG.
Most of the studies analyzed were of fairly low quality. For example, most patients were not blinded, so researchers could work out how much of the benefit from traditional Chinese medicine was due to the actual effects of the intervention and how much was due to a placebo effect. was not possible. The researchers also noted the possibility of publication bias and emphasized the need to standardize the practice of acupuncture in MG.
Therefore, this analysis showed that this traditional Chinese medicine practice may benefit patients, but to provide stronger evidence for clinical decision-making. ”, larger multicenter clinical randomized double-blind trials are needed in the future to objectively assess clinical efficacy,” the researchers said.
