MedWire News: Researchers have found that both traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture and sham acupuncture reduce menopausal hot flashes.

Nancy Avis (Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA) and colleagues recruited 56 women aged 44-55 years who had not menstruated in the past 3 months and suffered at least four hot flashes per day.

The women were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: usual care (n = 19), sham acupuncture (n = 18), and traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture (n = 119). Acupuncture was given twice a week for 8 consecutive weeks. Sham acupuncture involved shallow needling in nontherapeutic sites.

All the women experienced a significant decrease in hot flashes between weeks 1 and 8, with no significant difference among the three groups. However, when the sham and therapeutic acupuncture groups were combined, there was a significant difference in the reduction in hot flash frequency between acupuncture and usual care groups.

By the third week of treatment both acupuncture groups were reporting approximately a 40 percent decrease in hot flash frequency, compared with a decrease of around 10 percent for the usual care group.

"The important question remains as to whether sham acupuncture provides some benefit from the needling or whether the hot flash decrease was largely due to a placebo effect," the researchers conclude.

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