Acupuncture study Electroacupuncture helps with stress incontinence

The renowned journal JAMA has published a study showing that electroacupuncture is successful in women with stress incontinence. Electroacupuncture treatment reduced the number of episodes of involuntary urine output and urine output.

Electroacupuncture can relieve pain. Picture: thingamajiggs - fotolia

Scientists from China compared electroacupuncture and sham acupuncture to 504 women with stress incontinence. To this end, they assigned the subjects to two groups (252 women each), who received a total of 18 treatments over a period of 6 weeks. The verum group was treated with electroacupuncture, the control group only at sham points, without the needles being pierced into the skin.

Needled in the verum group bilaterally were points Zhongliao (BL33) and Huiyang (BL35) and the needles were stimulated with 50 Hz alternating current at an intensity of 1 to 5 mA for 30 minutes until the de-Qi sensation (" Reaching or arriving at the chi ").

It was found that the amount of urine collected in the template test decreased significantly by 9.9 grams in the verum group compared to 2.6 grams under the sham electroacupuncture.

The number of incontinence episodes also improved. In weeks 1 to 6, the women from the electroacupuncture group averaged 1.0 episodes less than the sham acupuncture group. In the weeks 15 to 18 the difference had risen to 2.0 episodes and in the 27 to 30 years to 2.1 episodes. The study can be found here. (Association of German Naturopaths)