Perhaps.

A recent study conducted at the Mayo Clinic General Clinical Research Center suggests that acupuncture can help reduce hot flashes by about 40%. In fact, the sham acupuncture treatments were equally as effective. Okay, before you jump on board the whole “placebo” bandwagon lets look at the facts.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine were inspired by several small studies which, showed acupuncture to be medically useful in reducing hot flashes of menopausal and perimenopausal women. One notable study (Huang, 2007) with 29 participants showed that acupuncture reduced the frequency and severity by 28% as compared to sham-acupuncture placebo at 6%. The Mayo Clinic team designed a larger (103 participants), randomized, single-blinded sham-controlled study.

Participants used a self-reported hot flash diary that measured frequency and severity and received biweekly treatments for 5 weeks. Results where recorded weekly during the 5 week treatment period and for 7 weeks after the treatment period.  At the end of study, the acupuncture group had a 40% reduction in hot flash symptoms at 6 weeks and 27% at 12 weeks, while the sham acupuncture group showed a 38% reduction at 6 weeks and 45% at 12 weeks.

These finding were interpreted as negative results by the authors of the study because acupuncture did not outperform sham-acupuncture. But lets consider the results objectively. In this study, both acupuncture and sham acupuncture groups reduced hot flashes by about 40%. This is in itself is as significant a reduction as commonly administered medical interventions using gabapentin or clonidine. Slightly less than the 50% reduction offered with treatment using antidepressant agents such as fluoxetine and somewhat short of estrogen therapy that offers up to a 75% decrease in hot flashing but brings with it increased risk of breast cancer, stroke and heart disease.

The principle difference between Huang’s 2007 and the Mayo Clinic’s 2007 study is two fold. First is the administration of sham acupuncture. Huang’s pilot study used retractable sham needles that did not puncture the skin at four to five non-acupuncture points while Mayo Clinic’s study used 12 penetrating needles at non-acupuncture points. This variable alone may contribute to the difference between the sham and real acupuncture results of the two studies. Secondly, Huang’s study was structured to include customizing of point selection for each individual according to the principle of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) while the Mayo Clinic’s study used the same 12 points on all participants. This lack of customization, which is a hallmark principle of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, may have falsely reduced the real acupuncture group’s results.

In both cases, it appears that acupuncture does have a positive effect on reducing hot flashing and that further study should be in order. However, a possibly more relevant approach to this question would be an outcome study matching acupuncture against current therapies. It seem irrelevant as to whether acupuncture can outperform sham if both can match the performance of current drug therapies. Besides efficacy other important issues of comparison would be toxicity, side effects and cost.