Abstract
BackgroundLittle is known about factors associated with a clinically relevant reduction in menopausal symptoms through a brief acupuncture approach for women with moderate-to-severe menopausal symptoms.MethodsPost hoc analysis of a randomized controlled trial where participants were allocated to early versus late standardized acupuncture. Both the early group and the late group are included in this study. The late group got an identical intervention parallel staged by 6 weeks. By means of the relative importance, the effect was evaluated for both early versus late women with a 6-week follow-up. We included four symptom subscales from the validated MenoScores Questionnaire: hot flushes, day and night sweats, general sweating, menopausal-specific sleeping problems, as well as an overall score, which is the sum of the four outcomes in the analysis.Results67 women with moderate to severe menopausal symptoms were included of whom 52 (77.6%) experienced a clinically relevant reduction in any of the four surveyed symptom subscales or overall score. 48 (71.6%) women experienced a clinically relevant reduction in any of the vasomotor symptom subscales: hot flushes, day and night sweats, general sweating.Women with vocational education were most likely to experience improvement compared to women with higher education. Beyond education, other factors of some importance for a clinically relevant reduction were no alcohol consumption, two or more births and urinary incontinence.ConclusionsLevel of education was the most consistent factor associated with improvement. Beyond education, other factors of some importance were no alcohol consumption, two or more births and urinary incontinence.Trial registrationThis study was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov at April 21, 2016. The registration number is NCT02746497.
Highlights
Little is known about factors associated with a clinically relevant reduction in menopausal symptoms through a brief acupuncture approach for women with moderate-to-severe menopausal symptoms
Design and intervention The study used data from a randomized trial evaluating the effectiveness of a standardized acupuncture intervention for women with moderate to severe menopausal symptoms [10]
We included healthy women aged 40– 65 years experiencing moderate to severe menopausal symptoms evaluated by the hot flushes (HF) subscale from the MenoScores Questionnaire (MSQ) [9]
Summary
Little is known about factors associated with a clinically relevant reduction in menopausal symptoms through a brief acupuncture approach for women with moderate-to-severe menopausal symptoms. The key symptom of menopause is hot flushes, which affects around 75% of menopausal women [5, 6, 8] and up to 10–20% report this symptom as very bothersome [5]. Other frequent menopausal symptoms are sweating and sleeping problems [9]. We have reported that a standardized and brief acupuncture treatment produced a fast and clinically relevant reduction among women with moderate-tosevere hot flushes, day and night sweating, general sweating as well as sleeping problems [10] and that overall effect on menopause-relevant outcomes was sustained up to 21 weeks after treatment stopped [11]. The literature on determinants for the effect of acupuncture is sparse [12], which is important to provide guidance to both the women and the acupuncturist
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