| Summary: | 碩士 === 中國醫藥大學 === 中西醫結合研究所碩士班 === 99 === Objective: Women are particularly vulnerable to anxiety and insomnia while during several stages in life, especially in the pre-menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and post-menopause stage. Several studies overseas have already pointed out that the improvement of acupuncture for anxiety disorders is pretty good. As auricular acupressure has the advantages of simple operation and non-invasiveness, our interest is to explore the clinical benefit of combining auricular acupressure and medication for anxiety in perimenopausal and early post-menopausal women.
Methods: This study is a double-blind, randomized and controlled study. Forty-four women of 40 to 60 years old, during perimenopause or early post-menopause who were bothered by anxiety symptoms. They were randomly divided into experimental (auricular acupressure) and control (sham acupressure) groups, received patches with or without magnetic beads on shenmen and subcortex acupoints of bilateral ears. A total of eight times treatment and a period of four weeks. Primary outcome measure is based on the change of total score of Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA). Secondary outcome measure is based on the change of total score of Menopause Rating Scale(MRS); change of Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) scores to evaluate quality; changes of Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) scores and Clinical Global Impression-Improvement (CGI-I) scores.
Results: There was no difference in demographic data such as age, education, parity, mechare, perimonopause or postmenopause stage. There was no difference in FSH level and scores of BSRS before entering study. There was more cases with prior using hormone in the control group. After treatment, subjects in both groups showed statistically significant improvements on anxiety, menopausal symptoms, clinical impression of improvement and severity. Regarding to the dosage of drugs, the average dosage decreased in auricular acupressure group with statistical significance, however, it was not in the control group. there was no difference between the real acupressure and sham acupressure groups.
Conclusions: Our study shows that both auricular acupressure and sham acupressure are effective treatments for anxiety symptoms, menopausal symptoms and quality of life in perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women, however, there are no statistical differences between the two groups. The average dosage decreased in auricular acupressure group with statistical significance. Therefore, we suggest that auricular acupressure can improve anexiety symptom in perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women. Further studies with more cases are needed.
Key words: Auricular acupressure; Anxiety; Insomnia; Perimenopause
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