Investigators determined that acupuncture plus herbal medicine produces significant patient outcomes for patients with COVID-19. In another independent clinical trial, moxibustion relieved diarrhea in COVID-19 patients and reduced the occurrence of positive nucleic acid results for coronavirus. Let’s take a look at both investigations.
Yueyang Integrative Medicine Hospital (a Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine affiliate) researchers tested the benefits of acupuncture and herbal medicine for the treatment of COVID-19. The results of this National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) funded research were published in Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion. [1] A total of 33 patients from Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital participated in the study. All patients in the study were diagnosed with COVID-19 using real-time fluorescent RT-PCR from February to March, 2020. There were 8 males and 25 females. The average age was 59.4 years. A total of 28 patients were diagnosed with moderate COVID-19 and 5 with severe COVID-19. The following discharge criteria were applied:
Body temperature returned to normal for more than 3 days
Respiratory symptoms improved significantly
Pulmonary imaging results showed significant reabsorption of acute exudative lesions
The nucleic acid test results were negative for two consecutive times (sampling intervals at least 24 hours apart)
After treatment, all 33 patients were cured and discharged, with the average length of stay reaching 9.24 (±5.57) days. Among them, 28 moderate cases were discharged with a total discharge rate of 100%, and the average length of stay was 7.04 (±1.71) days. The 5 severe cases were also discharged with a total discharge rate of 100% and the average length of stay was 21.60 (±2.07) days. Relevant symptoms (tightness, chest pain, fatigue, panic, anxiety, anorexia, insomnia, etc.) significantly improved. In addition, acupuncture plus herbs did not produce any severe adverse effects. The primary acupoints chosen for this investigation were the following:
LU7 (Lieque)
LI4 (Hegu)
PC6 (Neiguan)
LI11 (Quchi)
ST36 (Zusanli)
KD6 (Zhaohai)