A recent study published in PLoS One explored factors related to acupuncture response in patients with chronic severe functional constipation (CSFC). This was a secondary analysis of a previous multicenter randomized controlled trial consisting of a 2-week run-in period, 8-week treatment, and 12-week follow-up without treatment, in which patients with CSFC were randomly allocated to an electro-acupuncture group or a sham electro-acupuncture group. Among the 1021 participants analyzed, 50.5% were classified as responders. The findings revealed that the complete spontaneous bowel movement (CSBM) responder rate on week-20 was significantly greater in the electro-acupuncture group than in the sham electro-acupuncture group. On the other hand, both age and comorbidity were negatively associated with clinical response: with every one-year increase in age, the probability of clinical response was reduced by 1.2%. Furthermore, patients with comorbidities were approximately 42% less likely to respond to treatment. Hence, it was concluded that CSFC patients with increasing age and comorbidity may be less likely to respond to acupuncture. It was stated that these findings contribute to guiding clinical practice in terms of pretreatment patient selection.¹

Reference

1. Yang X, Liu Y, Liu B et al. Factors related to acupuncture response in patients with chronic severe functional constipation: Secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial. PLOS ONE. 2017;12(11):e0187723. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0187723.