April 22, 2021, by NCI Staff

Two types of acupuncture may help reduce chronic pain in cancer survivors, results from a large clinical trial suggest. Cancer survivors who participated in the study reported modest improvements in pain after receiving acupuncture compared with those who received standard pain treatments.

Although several studies have found that acupuncture appears to reduce pain in people without cancer, the trial is one of the first large randomized clinical studies designed to test whether the therapy might offer relief for cancer-related pain in survivors of a host of different cancers.

The researchers who led this new trial acknowledged several factors that could have affected its results, including that there was no group of participants who received a placebo version of acupuncture. Other researchers not involved in the study also pointed out that the lack of a placebo “arm” of the trial makes it difficult to rule out the possibility that the pain improvements reported by those who received acupuncture were the result of a “placebo effect.”

The trial enrolled a broad group of cancer survivors with a history of breast, prostate, lymphoma, and other types of cancers and tested two types of acupuncture, which experts not involved in the trial said are strengths of the study.

“If I look specifically at cancer pain management for cancer survivors, this does add something new,” said Robert Swarm, M.D., chief of the Division of Pain Management at Washington University School of Medicine. “I think this study will be of interest to oncologists and others involved in the care of cancer survivors.”

The researchers wanted to compare the effectiveness of “battlefield acupuncture,” a type of auricular (ear) acupuncture developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthy system, with electroacupuncture, which is commonly used by licensed acupuncturists, and usual care for reducing cancer-related pain.

The advantage of auricular acupuncture, study leaders said, is that it’s easy to train health care professionals to administer.

In the trial, led by Jun Mao, M.D., chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, participants who received electroacupuncture reported modestly better pain control than those treated with auricular acupuncture. Both types of acupuncture were superior to usual care. Overall, the decrease in pain lasted well beyond the last treatment session—up to 4 months, the researchers reported March 18 in JAMA Oncology.

“It’s very notable that effects of the acupuncture persisted over time,” said Heather Greenlee, N.D., Ph.D., director of Integrative Medicine Program of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who was not involved in the study but was an investigator on an earlier trial of acupuncture to reduce pain in women being treated for breast cancer.

“We observed a similar result in our trial: a fairly short course of acupuncture demonstrated sustained clinical effects on pain reduction,” Dr. Greenlee continued.

Compared with survivors who received electroacupuncture, participants who received auricular acupuncture were more likely to report side effects, primarily ear pain, and stop treatment because of side effects.

View full article: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/acupuncture-for-pain-cancer-survivors