Acupuncture for the treatment of severe acute pain in Herpes Zoster: results of a nested, open-label, randomized trial in the VZV Pain Study

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Lucio Pippa¹  Stefano Lagan๠ Gabriele Congedo¹  Giustino Parruti²  Giuseppina Placido²  Monica Tontodonati²  Augusta Consorte²  Tamara Ursini²  Ennio Polilli²  Cristina Rebuzzi³  Sonia Di Profio³  Patrizia Marani Toro⁴  Carla Granchelli⁴  Claudio D'Amario⁴  Lamberto Manzoli⁵ 

[1] Fondazione Onlus Camillo de Lellis per l'Innovazione e la Ricerca in Medicina, Pescara, Italy;Infectious Diseases Unit, Pescara General Hospital, Pescara, Italy;Pain Management Clinic, Pescara General Hospital, Pescara, Italy;Pescara Health District, Pescara, Italy;Section of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Chieti, Italy;

关键词: Visual Analogue Scale;    Pain Intensity;    Herpes Zoster;    Visual Analogue Scale Score;    Pregabalin;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-11-46

 received in 2010-12-20, accepted in 2011-06-05,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundData on the potential efficacy of acupuncture (AC) in controlling intense or very intense pain in patients with Herpes Zoster (HZ) has not been so far adequately assessed in comparison with standard pharmacological treatment (ST) by a controlled trial design.MethodsWithin the VZV Pescara study, pain was assessed in HZ patients on a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and by the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) both at the beginning and at the end of treatment. Response rates, mean changes in pain intensity, differences in total pain burden with an area-under-the-curve (AUC) method over a 1-year follow-up and differences in the incidence of Post-Herpetic Neuralgia (PHN) were evaluated.ResultsOne hundred and two patients were randomized to receive either AC (n = 52) or ST (n = 50) for 4 weeks. Groups were comparable regarding age, sex, pain intensity at presentation and missed antiviral prescription. Both interventions were largely effective. No significant differences were observed in response rates (81.6% vs 89.2%, p = 0.8), mean reduction of VAS (4.1 +/- 2.3 vs 4.9 +/- 1.9, p = 0.12) and MPQ scores (1.3 +/- 0.9 vs 1.3 +/- 0.9, p = 0.9), incidence of PHN after 3 months (48.4% vs 46.8%, p = 0.5), and mean AUC during follow-up (199 +/- 136 vs 173 +/- 141, p = 0.4). No serious treatment-related adverse event was observed in both groups.ConclusionsThis controlled and randomized trial provides the first evidence of a potential role of AC for the treatment of acute herpetic pain.Trial registrationChiCTR-TRC-10001146.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ursini et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.