Both real and sham acupuncture treatments may help alleviate side effects of drugs commonly used to treat breast cancer, finds a new analysis.

Both groups experienced lessening of their symptoms, especially hot flashes, but there was little difference in benefits between the real acupuncture and the sham acupuncture. "It could be that there is no difference, or it could be that in this small trial we just didn't have enough patients to detect a significant difference," said Dr. Bao. Notably, no patients experienced any significant side effects from either type of acupuncture treatment. "This is important because other treatments for symptoms often do have side effects, so showing that this treatment works without side effects could be a big improvement in the treatment of cancer survivors," explained Dr. Bao.
Although the researchers did not plan to look at racial differences, after the trial was completed they found that women who were African American experienced a greater reduction in the severity and frequency of hot flashes if they had real acupuncture rather than sham acupuncture when compared to non-African American women. "This kind of result is not definitive, but it does suggest that we should probably look further into the possibility that acupuncture may work better in some ethnicity groups than others," said Dr. Bao.
Source-Eurekalert