Pain, neuropathic pain, opioid, acupuncture, complementary medicine

INTRODUCTION: Acupuncture is a promising treatment for visceral cancer pain, but to date, evidence for immediate effects on neuropathic pain is limited. CASE PRESENTATION: This report presents a case of immediate pain relief by single-needle acupuncture on opioid-refractory neuropathic breakthrough pain in a 78-year-old female breast cancer patient with cervical bone metastases. Acupuncture was applied at a single point neuroanatomically correlating to the pain affected spinal segment...

Chronic pain not only has the greatest negative effect on quality of life compared with other chronic health problems but also contributes to the greatest disability worldwide. Management of chronic neuropathic pain is particularly challenging given its association with other pain processes, the fact that less than half of patients respond to a single pain medication, and the lack of evidence regarding combination therapy (i.e. a treatment regimen that combines several scheduled pain medications) safety and efficacy...

Acupuncture and electroacupuncture (EA) as complementary and alternative medicine have been accepted worldwide mainly for the treatment of acute and chronic pain. Studies on the mechanisms of action have revealed that endogenous opioid peptides in the central nervous system play an essential role in mediating the analgesic effect of EA. Further studies have shown that different kinds of neuropeptides are released by EA with different frequencies. For example, EA of 2 Hz accelerates the release of enkephalin, beta-endorphin and endomorphin, while that of 100 Hz selectively increases the release of dynorphin...