Acupuncture in intractable epilepsy: lack of effect on health-related quality of life

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the effect on health-related quality of life of acupuncture and sham acupuncture as adjunctive treatment in intractable epilepsy. We performed a randomized controlled trail with two parallel treatment arms at The National Center for Epilepsy in Norway, a comprehensive epilepsy center. Thirty-four patients with long-standing drug resistant epilepsy completed the study. The intervention consisted of 20 acupuncture treatments (bilateral needling of three acupoints plus one or two individually chosen points) or sham acupuncture (bilateral needling with smaller needles of three points outside the traditional meridians) over 8 weeks. The main outcome measures were changes in mean health-related quality of life scores for the two groups after 8 weeks, using the 89-item Quality of Life in Epilepsy (QOLIE-89) questionnaire. We found no difference between the acupuncture and sham acupuncture groups in score changes in any dimension of the QOLIE-89 questionnaire, despite testing a large number of dimensions. We also found no change in QOLIE-89 scores between baseline and 8 weeks in either groups. In conclusion, we could not demonstrate a significant effect of traditional acupuncture or sham acupuncture on the health-related quality of life of patients with intractable epilepsy.