Effects of Acupuncture Treatment on Fibromyalgia Symptoms, Serotonin, and Substance P Levels: A Randomized Sham and Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Substance P.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of acupuncture treatment on serum levels of serotonin and substance P (SP) as well as on clinical parameters in patients with fibromyalgia (FM).

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

Seventy-five women with FM were randomized into one of three kinds of acupuncture treatment: real acupuncture group (AcG), sham acupuncture group (ShG), and simulated acupuncture group (SiG).

Treatments were applied semiweekly for four weeks.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Substance P and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

A time span of four weeks appears in the methods.

This is a randomized controlled clinical trial.

The serum levels of serotonin and SP were evaluated before and after the eight sessions.

Patients were clinically assessed by visual analog scale (VAS), the number of tender points (NTP), Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) at baseline, after the last treatment, and one and three months after completion of all treatments.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acupuncture Therapy, Fibromyalgia, Pain Management, Pain Measurement, Serotonin and Substance P.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Substance P over four weeks.

Its findings take up roughly 10 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2018 (Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Substance P compound page, all human trials.