Acupuncture is effective to treat endometriosis

Endometriosis is a chonic inflammatory, gynaecological condition that can result in long-lasting visceral pelvic pain and infertility. Also women with more advanced degrees of endometriosis showed higher CA-125 levels in both serum and peritoneal fluid. Much research has shown that acupuncture could be an effective treatment for endometriosis and may relieve pain. Recently a review has analyzed the effect of acupuncture on endometriosis. 10 studies involving 589 patients were included in the review. The main outcomes assessed were variation in pain level, variation in peripheral blood CA-125 level, and clinical effective rate. The result has shown that acupuncture has significant effect on pain reduction, lowing blood CA-125 and increased clinical effective rate compared to the control. Current research has suggested that acupuncture could be an effective way to treat endometriosis and help release the pain and decrease the blood CA-125 level.

Acupuncture releases pain by increasing pain thresholds in human subjects, and it would appear to activate analgesic brain mechanisms through the release of neurohumoral factors, including adenosine, γ-aminobutyric acid, opioid peptide, acetylcholine, nitric oxide, noradrenaline, dopamine) and others. Acupuncture also enhances the ability of the immune system to more actively eliminate malignant cells by increasing the ability of NK cells to kill cancer cells.

References
Xu Y et al Plos One 2017 Oct 27;12(10):e0186616.