Chuna Manual Therapy or Electroacupuncture with Pregabalin for Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study
Background: Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is one of the most common side effects of chemotherapy, and effective treatments for CIPN are still lacking. For this reason, there is a growing interest in complementary and alternative medicine as a potential source of nonsurgical treat...
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Published in | Journal of clinical medicine Vol. 13; no. 13; p. 3916 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Basel
MDPI AG
04.07.2024
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Background: Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is one of the most common side effects of chemotherapy, and effective treatments for CIPN are still lacking. For this reason, there is a growing interest in complementary and alternative medicine as a potential source of nonsurgical treatments for CIPN symptoms alongside pregabalin. One such option being explored is Chuna manual therapy (CMT), a traditional Korean manual therapy. Methods: This study compares the effectiveness and safety of using only pregabalin (PG) as a conventional method of treating breast and colorectal cancer patients with CIPN symptoms with a combination of both PG and electroacupuncture (EA) or CMT, while also assessing the feasibility of future large-scale clinical studies. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only 74 CIPN patients were recruited to this study. Twenty-five were assigned to the PG group, 26 to the PG + EA group, and 22 to the PG + CMT group for a five-week treatment and a four-week follow-up study. Results: For the primary outcome, we evaluated the mean differences in Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy/Gynecologic Oncology Group-Neurotoxicity (FACT/GOG-Ntx) compared to the baseline at week 5 (visit 4). Although we found that the PG + CMT group showed the biggest difference (−16.64 [95% CI: −25.16, −8.11]) compared to the PG group (−8.60 [95% CI: −14.93, −2.27]) and the PG + EA group (−6.73 [95% CI: −12.34, −1.13]), this finding lacked statistical significance (p = 0.2075). In terms of safety, two patients in the PG + CMT group reported side effects: one bruise and one headache. Conclusions: The low attrition and high adherence rates of all the groups, and the similar rates of side effects among them, support the feasibility of larger-scale follow-up studies. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2077-0383 2077-0383 |
DOI: | 10.3390/jcm13133916 |