An American team, part funded by the US Government’s National Institutes of Health, has shown that acupuncture for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, offers significant improvements over usual care. The pilot randomised trial recruited 75 patients who had received at least three months of chemotherapy. They compared eight weeks of acupuncture, with both sham acupuncture and usual care. Compared with usual care, real acupuncture had the greatest effect on pain, tingling and numbness.
From baseline to week 8, the mean pain reduction in the real acupuncture group was -1.75, that for sham acupuncture was -0.91, and that for usual care was -0.19. At 12 week follow-up, real acupuncture maintained virtually all of its improvement, whilst sham had dropped back to -0.34.
(Effect of Acupuncture vs Sham Procedure on Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Symptoms: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, 11 March 2020.)