Acupuncture therapy for drug addiction
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Motlagh et al. Chin Med (2016) 11:16 DOI 10.1186/s13020-016-0088-7
Open Access
REVIEW
Acupuncture therapy for drug addiction Farid Esmaeili Motlagh1,2,3, Fatimah Ibrahim1,2*, Rusdi Abd Rashid3, Tahereh Seghatoleslam3,4 and Hussain Habil3
Abstract Acupuncture therapy has been used to treat substance abuse. This study aims to review experimental studies examining the effects of acupuncture on addiction. Research and review articles on acupuncture treatment of substance abuse published between January 2000 and September 2014 were searched using the databases ISI Web of Science Core Collection and EBSCO’s MEDLINE Complete. Clinical trial studies on the efficacy of acupuncture therapy for substance abuse were classified according to substance (cocaine, opioid, nicotine, and alcohol), and their treatment protocols, assessments, and findings were examined. A total of 119 studies were identified, of which 85 research articles addressed the efficacy of acupuncture for treating addiction. There were substantial variations in study protocols, particularly regarding treatment duration, frequency of electroacupuncture, duration of stimulation, and choice of acupoints. Contradictory results, intergroup differences, variation in sample sizes, and acupuncture placebo effects made it difficult to evaluate acupuncture effectiveness in drug addiction treatment. This review also identified a lack of rigorous study design, such as control of confounding variables by incorporating sham controls, sufficient sample sizes, reliable assessments, and adequately replicated experiments. Background In 1997, the National Institutes of Health accepted acupuncture therapy as an acceptable procedure complementary to Western medicine [1]. Evidence for its therapeutic effects comes mainly from clinical practice and research into pain control, fibromyalgia, headaches, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression [2]. Acupuncture therapy can be administered using either manual insertion of needles or electroacupuncture (EA), a mild electrical stimulation of acupoints. Extended acupuncture methods may involve finger pressure (acupressure) and laser therapy [3]. In 1985, Dr. M. Smith finalized the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) protocol that is currently practiced in over 250 hospitals in the United Kingdom and United States [4]. In 1996, the World Health Organization accepted acupuncture as a treatment for drug abuse [5]. The latest modification to this treatment protocol was developed in 2005 by Dr. Ji Sheng
*Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
from Peking University, Beijing, China [6]. Currently, more than 700 addiction treatment centers use acupuncture as an adjunctive procedure [7]. Prominent effects of acupuncture are increases in the levels of enkephalin, epinephrine, endorphin, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine in the cent
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