Acupuncture for pain in endometriosis

Xiaoshu Zhu, Zhu X, Hamilton KD, Kindreth D Hamilton, Ewan D McNicol, McNicol ED
The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2011 · vol. 2011(9) , pp. CD007864 · doi:10.1002/14651858.cd007864.pub2 · PMID:21901713 · PMC10010596 · W2224835646
review OA: green CC0 ⤵ 43 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

A single randomized trial found that auricular acupuncture significantly reduced dysmenorrhea pain compared to Chinese herbal medicine in women with endometriosis.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is a prevalent gynaecological condition, significantly affecting women's lives. Clinical presentations may vary from absence of symptoms to complaints of chronic pelvic pain, most notably dysmenorrhoea. The management of pain in endometriosis is currently inadequate. Acupuncture has been studied in gynaecological disorders but its effectiveness for pain in endometriosis is uncertain. OBJECTIVES: To determine the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture for pain in endometriosis. SEARCH STRATEGY: We searched the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group (MSDG) Specialised Register of controlled trials, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, PsycINFO, CNKI and TCMDS (from inception to 2010) and reference lists of retrieved articles. SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomised single or double-blind controlled trials enrolling women of reproductive age with a laparoscopically confirmed diagnosis of endometriosis and comparing acupuncture (body, scalp or auricular) to either placebo or sham, no treatment, conventional therapies or Chinese herbal medicine. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Three authors independently assessed risk of bias and extracted data; we contacted study authors for additional information. Meta-analyses were not performed as only one study was included. The primary outcome measure was decrease in pain from endometriosis. Secondary outcome measures included improvement in quality of life scores, pregnancy rate, adverse effects and rate of endometriosis recurrence. MAIN RESULTS: Twenty-four studies were identified that involved acupuncture for endometriosis; however only one trial, enrolling 67 participants, met all the inclusion criteria. The single included trial defined pain scores and cure rates according to the Guideline for Clinical Research on New Chinese Medicine. Dysmenorrhoea scores were lower in the acupuncture group (mean difference -4.81 points, 95% confidence interval -6.25 to -3.37, P < 0.00001) using the 15-point Guideline for Clinical Research on New Chinese Medicine for Treatment of Pelvic Endometriosis scale. The total effective rate ('cured', 'significantly effective' or 'effective') for auricular acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine was 91.9% and 60%, respectively (risk ratio 3.04, 95% confidence interval 1.65 to 5.62, P = 0.0004). The improvement rate did not differ significantly between auricular acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine for cases of mild to moderate dysmenorrhoea, whereas auricular acupuncture did significantly reduce pain in cases of severe dysmenorrhoea. Data were not available for secondary outcomes measures. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The evidence to support the effectiveness of acupuncture for pain in endometriosis is limited, based on the results of only a single study that was included in this review. This review highlights the necessity for developing future studies that are well-designed, double-blinded, randomised controlled trials that assess various types of acupuncture in comparison to conventional therapies.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

dysmenorrheaendometriosischronic_pelvic_pain

MeSH descriptors

Acupuncture, Ear Endometriosis Pelvic Pain Acupuncture, Ear Drugs, Chinese Herbal Drugs, Chinese Herbal Dysmenorrhea Dysmenorrhea Endometriosis Female Humans Pelvic Pain Pelvic Pain Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (73)

Cited by (41)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-08-31T06:09:41.840111+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:16:35.898691+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK