Acupuncture may ease the itch of eczema

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An acupuncture session may bring some itch relief to people with the allergic skin condition known as atopic eczema, a preliminary study suggests.

In the new study, German researchers looked at the short-term effects of acupuncture on skin inflammation and itching in 30 people with atopic eczema.

They found that the therapy, when done minutes after patients'' skin was exposed to an allergen (either pollen or dust mites), appeared to soothe subjective feelings of itchiness.

In addition, when patients were exposed to the allergen for a second time shortly after the acupuncture session, they tended to have a less-severe skin reaction, the researchers report in the journal Allergy.

The findings show that in this "experimental setting," acupuncture seems to ease the itch of atopic eczema, lead researcher Dr. Florian Pfab, of the Technical University of Munich, told Reuters Health in an email.

The study does not, however, answer the question of whether acupuncture as practiced in the real world would have similar benefits.

For the study, Pfab and his colleagues looked at all 30 patients under three different test conditions.

In one, patients had their skin exposed to either pollen or dust-mite allergens, then received true, or "point-specific," acupuncture -- in which needles were placed in traditional acupuncture points that, according to Chinese medicine, are related to itchy skin.

In another condition, the allergen exposure was followed by "placebo-point" acupuncture, where the needles were inserted into skin areas not used in traditional Chinese medicine. In the third condition, patients received no treatment.

Overall, Pfab''s team found, patients'' itchiness ratings were lower after they received true acupuncture, compared with both no treatment and placebo acupuncture.

Then, when the researchers exposed patients'' skin to the allergens a second time, skin flare-ups tended to be less-severe following the point-specific acupuncture. As for itchiness, however, both the true and placebo therapies had similar benefits compared with no treatment.