A team in Israel studying treatment for warts has found that acupuncture may be able to clear persistent examples by initiating an anti-inflammatory immune response. They recruited 18 patients, aged 20 to 70, with persistent HPV-related warts, and gave them four, weekly sessions of either true or sham acupuncture. Clinical success was defined as total clearance of all warts with no recurrence during a three month follow-up period.
In the treatment group, the clinical success rate was 37%, whereas in the control group, it was zero. Measurement of cytokine levels in participants’ blood suggested that acupuncture may cause a shift towards a Th1-cell-mediated immune response, or an anti-inflammatory effect against the micro-environment induced by the warts.
The authors say that as acupuncture did not involve a direct assault on the lesions, as is usually the case with other treatments, it can be combined with other, more-conventional methods. These results, although moderate, should be sufficient to justify further research. The study found a correlation between lesion regression following acupuncture treatment and immune characteristics, suggesting a mechanism for acupuncture’s effect.
(Immune Modulation & Treatment Of Human Papilloma Virus-Related Warts with Energetics of Living Systems Acupuncture. Medical Acupuncture, 1 June 2017.)
