Children's Studies

• Recently acupuncture has increasingly being integrated into pediatric health care with acupuncture being used on ~150,000 children (0.2%). Researchers aim to update the evidence for the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for children and evaluate the methodological qualities of these studies to improve future research in this area. Researchers included 24 systematic reviews, comprising 142 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with 12,787 participants. The efficacy of acupuncture for five diseases (Cerebral Palsy (CP(, nocturnal enuresis, tic disorders, amblyopia, and pain reduction) is promising. Only six reviews reported minor adverse events (AEs) and no fatal side effects were reported. The efficacy of acupuncture for some diseases is promising with only few minor side effects.77

• Researchers wished to add commentary to a recently published research paper entitled “Looking for new treatments of Infantile Colic” by Savino et al.. Researchers stated that the positive effects of acupuncture have been demonstrated to release pain and agitation in enfants with colic, and that acupuncture appears to be a safe treatment when performed by trained acupuncturists. Researchers opined that Inconclusive results in the few published articles on the subject may be due to different acupuncture points, different insertion times, different needling methods, differences in the outcome variables, in how the crying was measured and insufficient sample sizes. Further research is warranted to properly understand the utility, safety, and effectiveness of acupuncture in infants with colic.74

• The purpose of this study was to investigat the effectiveness of acupuncture in improving the volume and quality of mother’s milk (lactation). Researchers were also interested in determining if they could increse the success rate of breastfeeding. Based on the routine hospital care, the patients in the observation group received auricular point stimulation with vaccaria seed (non-needle acupuncture) at Endocrine (CO18), Mammary Gland, etc. 1 hour after childbirth, which was pressed 3 times daily, for 1-2 min each time. In the control group, routine hospital care was given, which didn’t include auricular point stimulation. The lactation volume, starting time of lactation and serum prolactin (PRL) were observed after 5 days of treatment. Compared with the control group, lactation volume in the observation group was more superior (P less than 0.01). Rate I of lactation volume in the observation group was 51.9% (27/52), which was obviously higher than 27.3% (15/55) in the control group (P less than 0.01). The starting time of lactation in the observation group was obviously earlier than that in the control group (P less than 0.05). The content of PRL was apparently improved after one or two days of childbirth (both P less than 0.05), and significantly increased after 5 days (P less than 0.01). Conclusion: This method appeared to improve lacation in mothers, and may be beneficial to increasing the success rate of breastfeeding.75

• This article investigates the efficacy of acupuncture for the maintenance of breastfeeding during the first 3 months of a newborn’s life. Acupuncture sessions were performed twice weekly for 3 weeks (total six sessions). The control group made weekly visits to the clinic and the midwife observed their breastfeeding, giving routine care. In both groups, a semistructured clinical assessment of breastfeeding quality was carried out by the midwife at enrollment and after 3 weeks. Moreover, in both groups a telephone interview was conducted by the midwife at the third month of the infants’ lives, regarding the continuation of breastfeeding. No significant difference in the exclusive breastfeeding rate before treatment was observed between acupuncture and observation groups (51.2% versus 48.8%). However, at 3 weeks post-enrollment, exclusive breastfeeding was significantly lower in the observation group than in the acupuncture group (60% versus 100%; (p  less than 0.03). At the third month of the newborns’ lives, breastfeeding was reported in 35% of the acupuncture group, compared to 15% of the observation group (p 0.03). The data suggests that 3 weeks of acupuncture treatment were more effective than observation alone in maintaining breastfeeding until the third month of the newborns’ lives.76