Acupuncture therapy results in immediate bronchodilating effect in asthma patients.

BACKGROUND According to previous data on asthma in the English literature, there are some results that show encouraging effects of acupuncture improving pulmonary function in asthma patients. We designed a prospective randomized crossover controlled study to determine the efficacy of acupuncture in asthma patients. METHODS Eighteen asthma patients with bronchodilator response >20% improvement of forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) were initially randomly assigned to receive 1 performance of real acupuncture (RA) or sham acupuncture (SA) in a blinded manner. After a washout period, the patients were crossed over. Spirometry was done and recorded before and after acupuncture. RESULTS Sixteen of 18 patients completed the study. The mean (+/-SD) FEV1 values before and after RA were 1.52 +/- 0.45L and 1.67 +/- 0.40L, respectively (p < 0.001). The mean (+/-SD) FEV1 values before and after SA were 1.49 +/- 0.40L and 1.49 +/- 0.41L, respectively (p = 0.838, not significant). The percentage change in FEV1 values after RA was better than after SA (RA, 11.57 +/- 8.11%; SA, 0.32 +/- 7.76%; p = 0.003), while the bronchodilator response of FEV1 from simple inhalation bronchodilator was better than that for RA (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION In asthma patients, acupuncture treatment may result in immediate improvement of FEV1, but the degree of improvement is less than that from inhalation bronchodilator.