A Case Study on Acupuncture in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

Abstract

3132.

Acupuncture as Add-On Treatment of the Positive, Negative, and Cognitive Symptoms of Patients with Schizophrenia: A Systematic Review

“…As can be seen in Figure 1, our search resulted in 97 articles, of which 38 articles were relevant, but only 26 of those 38 satisfied the inclusion criteria and were, thus, eligible for inclusion in this review. Of the 26, 7 were randomized controlled trials [32][33][34][35][36][37][38], 12 were case studies [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50], and 7…”

“…However, noting that an important distinction needs to be made between quantitative and qualitative results is important. As Bosch and colleagues [43] explained in their study, a patient with schizophrenia might still suffer from hallucinations (i.e., positive symptoms, such as hallucinations, in patients with schizophrenia [40][41][42]. Shi [42] found that particularly auricular acupuncture (i.e., on the ear) was effective in treating the auditory hallucinations of patients suffering from schizophrenia.…”

“…Positive results have been reported for the treatment of co-morbid sleep disorders [35,50]. schizophrenia and co-morbid sleep disorders [43][44][45]. However, those positive effects of acupuncture in the treatment of the co-morbid sleep disorders could not be replicated in a randomized, controlled trial on 40 outpatients with schizophrenia [38].…”

Sleep disorders in patients with depression or schizophrenia: A randomized controlled trial using acupuncture treatment

“…The relatively low scores in positive and negative symptoms at T1 (and T2) seem to indicate the comparative wellness of the cohort studied [51] and as a result, one would expect to see less evidence of a reduction in the scores and improvements might be more difficult to detect [52]. Previous research has shed some doubts on the sensitivity of the PANSS in this chronic patient group in research with acupuncture [32,50,51]. Secondly, as can also be seen in Table 2, the absolute scores on the PANSS subscales (with the exception of the PANSS POS subscale) do decrease between 1.5 and 4.7 points after acupuncture treatment; however, in future research larger clinical samples are needed in order to reliably test for significance since there is not enough statistical power in the present study.…”

“…The healthy control group was not treated with acupuncture; while no clinical effect of acupuncture could be expected in healthy participants (previous research has shown that acupuncture has a modulating and normalising effect) [32,33], they were only included to establish reference values in the current cultural and geographical cohort and were only used in the tests at T1. In the patient groups, two measurements were taken: before (T1) and after acupuncture treatment or a waitlist period (T2 just after waking and evening before going to sleep [34] (Fig.…”