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TOPLINE:

Treatment with electroacupuncture for 24 weeks improved cognitive function compared to sham electroacupuncture in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), with long-term sustained benefits after treatment completion, a new trial showed.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a single-center, parallel-group, patient- and outcome assessor-blinded randomized clinical trial including 66 adults with AD in China from 2021 to 2024.
• Patients were randomly assigned to receive either electroacupuncture (n = 33; mean age, 71 years; 45.5% women) or sham electroacupuncture (n = 33; mean age, 73 years; 58% women).
• All patients underwent intervention or sham procedure for 20 minutes per session, thrice weekly on nonconsecutive days for 24 weeks, followed by a 4-week follow-up period. Both groups continued standard pharmacologic treatment with donepezil and memantine.
• The primary outcome was a change in the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive (ADAS-Cog) score at weeks 8, 16, 24, and 28. Secondary outcomes included changes in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) scale scores and Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) scores at weeks 24 and 28, as well as adverse events.

TAKEAWAY:

• Improvements in the ADAS-Cog score in the electroacupuncture group were observed as early as week 8 (mean difference [MD], -3.55; P = .0017), reached clinically meaningful levels by week 16 (MD, -6.46; P = .0003), and were sustained through week 28 follow-up (MD, -6.99; P = .0012), with similar results after sensitivity analysis.
• At week 24, the electroacupuncture group showed significantly greater improvements than sham electroacupuncture in basic ADL scores (MD, -1.70; P < .05), instrumental ADL scores (MD, -4.46; P < .05), and total NPI scores (MD, -6.94; P < .05). However, these effects were not maintained at week 28.
• No adverse events attributed to the treatment were reported in either group during the study period.

IN PRACTICE:

“These results provide preliminary evidence supporting the potential role of EA [electroacupuncture] as a nonpharmacologic intervention for AD, while highlighting the need for larger, rigorously designed multicenter trials incorporating objective biomarkers to confirm these findings,” the investigators wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Ran Li and Zehao Chen from Guang’anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China. It was published online on May 4 in Frontiers in Psychiatry.

LIMITATIONS:

The single-center trial design, along with a relatively small sample size and a substantial dropout rate, may have led to selection and attrition bias and limited the generalizability of the findings. The absence of neuroimaging or biomarker assessments limited the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the observed score improvements, introducing diagnostic uncertainty. The control sham electroacupuncture may not have been completely inert with subtle somatosensory or expectancy effects. Secondary outcomes were not adjusted for multiple comparisons. Also, the use of individualized stimulation intensity and the absence of formal blinding assessment raised the possibility of partial unblinding, introducing performance or expectation bias.

DISCLOSURES:

The study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, Traditional Chinese Medicine modernization, and the Scientific and Technological Innovation Project of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. The investigators reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.