Taiwanese researchers have conducted a meta-analysis and concluded that acupuncture improves menopause symptoms.

Effects of acupuncture on menopause -related symptoms and quality of life in women on natural menopause.

The researchers conducted a meta-analysis  to evaluate the effects of acupuncture on hot flash frequency and severity, menopause-related symptoms, and quality of life in women in natural menopause.  Of 105 studies assessed,  12 studies with 869 participants met the inclusion criteria and were included in this study.

What is a meta-analysis?

According to Wikipedia:

In statistics, meta-analysis comprises statistical methods for contrasting and combining results from different studies in the hope of identifying patterns among study results, sources of disagreement among those results, or other interesting relationships that may come to light in the context of multiple studies.   Meta-analysis can be thought of as “conducting research about previous research.”

The motivation of a meta-analysis is to aggregate information in order to achieve a higher statistical power for the measure of interest, as opposed to a less precise measure derived from a single study. In performing a meta-analysis, an investigator must make choices many of which can affect its results, including deciding how to search for studies, selecting studies based on a set of objective criteria, dealing with incomplete data, analyzing the data, and accounting for or choosing not to account for publication bias.

Study results.

The authors found that acupuncture improves menopause symptoms:

The results of the analysis showed that acupuncture significantly reduced the frequency and severity of hot flushes. In addition, acupuncture was shown to significantly improve psychological, somatic, urogenital symptoms and vasomotor symptoms (night sweats, hot flashes/flushes).. Acupuncture’s beneficial effects on hot flush frequency and severity were found to persist for up three months.

Effects of acupuncture on menopause-related symptoms and quality of life in women on natural menopause: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Chiu HY¹, Pan CH, Shyu YK, Han BC, Tsai PS.