Treatment of primary Raynaud's syndrome with traditional Chinese acupuncture

Objective. Evaluation of the effects of a standardized acupuncture treatment in primary Raynaud's syndrome. Design. A controlled randomized prospective study. Setting. A winter period of 23 weeks, angiological clinic of Hannover Medical School. Subjects. Thirty-three patients with primary Raynaud's syndrome (16 control, 17 treatment). Interventions. The patients of the treatment group were given seven acupuncture treatments during the weeks 10 and 11 of the observation period. Main outcome measures. All patients kept a diary throughout the entire observation period noting daily frequency, duration and severity of their vasospastic attacks. A local cooling test combined with nailfold capillaroscopy was performed for all patients at baseline (week 1) and in weeks 12 and 23, recording flowstop reactions of the nailfold capillaries. Results. The treated patients showed a significant decrease in the frequency of attacks from 1.4 day(-1) to 0.6 day(-1), P < 0.01 (control 1.6 to 1.2, P = 0.08). The overall reduction of attacks was 63% (control 27%, P = 0.03). The mean duration of the capillary flowstop reaction decreased from 71 to 24 s (week 1 vs. week 12, P = 0.001) and 38 s (week 1 vs. week 23, P = 0.02) respectively. In the control group the changes were not significant. Conclusions. These findings suggest that traditional Chinese acupuncture is a reasonable alternative in treating patients with primary Raynaud's syndrome.