Acupuncture and Bronchial Asthma

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Seventeen patients with stable bronchial asthma were randomly assigned to receive either correct acupuncture or placebo acupuncture. The study lasted 11 weeks and consisted of a pre-therapy, therapy, and post-therapy period. The patients received 10 treatments during a 5-week period. The effect of therapy on pulmonary function was assessed daily by the patients at home. Morning and evening peak expiratory flow rate, number of puffs beta 2-agonist aerosol needed, as well as subjective symptoms of asthma were recorded in a diary. The correctly treated group improved significantly throughout the study. Also, compared with the placebo group, a significant improvement was found in all assessed parameters 2 weeks after beginning therapy. Hereafter, no differences could be shown.