Acupuncture for Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients

Acupuncture for Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients: A Single-blinded Randomized Sham-controlled Clinical Trial

In this study, a 14-week, single blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial will be conducted to determine whether acupuncture could have significant benefits than sham acupuncture for IBS.

This is a single blinded randomized sham controlled clinical trial with two arms. 120 IBS patients will be recruited. The study will cooperate with Hong Kong Baptist University, and University of Toronto. After a 2-week run-in period, eligible subjects will be randomly assigned to one of two arms, acupuncture (AC) arm and sham acupuncture (SAC) arm. Each eligible subject will go through a 2-wk run-in-period, 6-wk treatment period and follow by a 6-wk of follow-up period. Five visits in total were scheduled for each subject in week 0, week 2, week 5, week 8 and week 14.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Fulfillment of the Rome IV criteria for IBS
• IBS Symptom Severity Scale (IBS-SSS) > 75 points (a range of 0-500 points of VAS on five questions) at baseline and during the 2-week run-in period
• Written informed consent.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Pregnancy or breast-feeding
• Medical history of inflammatory bowel diseases, carbohydrate malabsorption, hormonal disorder, known allergies to food additives, and/or any other serious diseases
• Unstable medical conditions
• Unstable mental condition or with history of mental illness
• Patients who have received acupuncture treatment in last three months, or took concomitant medication with affect gastrointestinal motility or visceral sensation, such as antidiarrheal agent, antidepressant, narcotic analgesic, and anticholinergic
• Alcoholism or drug abuse in past 1 year
• Having needle phobia