In a UC Irvine-led study published in BMC Medicine, fifth-year PhD in Pharmacological Sciences student Ding Quan (Quinton) Ng, along with Dr. Alexandre Chan and additional researchers, evaluated the effects of acupuncture as breast cancer-related pain treatment on analgesic use and healthcare costs.
The research team — which also included Sanghoon Lee of Kyung Hee University, Richard T. Lee of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Yun Wang of Chapman University — compared annualized changes in analgesics and healthcare resource utilization between acupuncture-treated and non-treated patients. Funding for the project was provided by the 2023 PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.
“Pain is one of the most disabling and feared symptoms for breast cancer patients, and managing it remains a challenge,” said Ng. “While acupuncture has been shown to help in large-scale randomized controlled trials, it is not widely covered by insurance or recommended in practice due to uncertainty about its effectiveness in real-world settings. With real-world claims data, our study confirms that acupuncture reduces the need for opioids and other pain medications while lowering overall healthcare costs for patients who receive more sessions.”
The findings published in this study are only the beginning of Ng’s efforts to expand acupuncture access and mitigate pain for cancer patients. Additional research is needed to further understand the nuances of the practice and how best to tailor treatment according to patient needs.
“Not everyone benefits from acupuncture,” he explained. “Future studies should focus on finding ways to prescreen responders and monitor treatment response at the clinics to facilitate reimbursement using pragmatic trial designs.”
Ng and the team hope the results of the study will help to make the case for the use of acupuncture as treatment for cancer-related pain, eventually leading to widespread insurance coverage of acupuncture and an increase in the application of integrative medicine practices that incorporate both Western and traditional medicine into patient care.
