Acupuncture May Improve Meniere Disease Symptoms

THURSDAY, Jan. 2, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Acupuncture may improve the symptoms of vertigo, tinnitus, ear fullness, and hearing loss in patients with Meniere disease, according to a review published online Dec. 10 in Frontiers in Medicine.

Mingjie Tang, from the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in China, and colleagues conducted a systematic literature review to evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture treatment for Meniere disease.

Based on six studies, the researchers found that treatment of Meniere disease with acupuncture or acupuncture combined with Western medicine was superior to Western medicine alone (control) in terms of efficacy rate (risk ratio, 1.20). Compared with control, acupuncture also reduced the dizziness handicap inventory (mean difference [MD], 6.94), tinnitus handicap inventory (MD, 6.52), stuffy ear visual analog scale (MD, 0.87), and pure tone audiometry score (MD, 6.57). Methodological shortcomings included failure to implement blinding, inappropriate outcome measures, and heterogeneity of clinical interventions, such as selected acupoints, acupuncture sessions, and therapist techniques.

“Due to the lack of literature included in this study and methodological weaknesses like randomization, blinding, and clinical heterogeneity, more well-designed long-term follow-up randomized controlled trials are needed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture,” the authors write.

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