Acupuncture for Breast Cancer

Studies show exercise therapy, acupuncture benefit breast cancer survivors

Two new studies from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania offer hope for breast cancer survivors struggling with cancer-related pain and swelling, and point to ways to enhance muscular strength and body image. The studies appear in a first of its kind monograph from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs focusing on integrative oncology, which combines a variety of therapies, some non-traditional, for maximum benefit to cancer patients.

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In the second study, Expectancy in Real and Sham Electroacupuncture: Does Believing Make It So? researchers at Penn Medicine and other institutions found that electro-acupuncture ("real" acupuncture) helped reduce joint pain by as much as 40 percent in women with breast cancer, whether the patient expected it to work or not. The study also found that "sham" acupuncture – which involves nonpenetrative needles and no electrical stimulation – provided pain reduction as high as 80 percent if patients had a high degree of expectation that it would work. The study results provide important implications for future treatment of breast cancer patients with joint pain.

"Our study is the first to provide evidence that expectancy has no effect on whether real acupuncture works or not, but that high expectancy does appear to have a positive effect on patients who receive sham acupuncture," said the study's senior author Jun J. Mao, MD MSCE, an associate professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and director of the Abramson Cancer Center's integrative oncology program, who served as editor of the special monograph. "This issue extends beyond acupuncture and is important to all trials involving pain management that use placebos, such as drugs, procedures, and natural products."

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