The Parkinson's society website has some information about acupuncture.
Research into Acupuncture
Parsing brain activity associated with acupuncture treatment in Parkinson's diseases. link here
Chae Y, Lee H, Kim H, Kim CH, Chang DI, Kim KM, Park HJ.
Department of Meridian and Acupoint, College of Korean Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Movement Disorders. 2009 Sep 15;24(12):1794-802.
Abstract
Acupuncture, a common treatment modality within complementary and alternative medicine, has been widely used for Parkinson's disease (PD). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we explored the neural mechanisms underlying the effect of specific and genuine acupuncture treatment on the motor function in patients with PD. Three fMRI scans were performed in random order in a block design, one for verum acupuncture (VA) treatment, another one for a covert placebo (CP), and the third one for an overt placebo (OP) at the motor function implicated acupoint GB34 on the left foot of 10 patients with PD. We calculated the contrast that subtracts the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) response for the acupuncture effect (VA vs. CP) and the placebo effect (CP vs. OP). We found a significant improvement in the motor function of the affected hand after acupuncture treatment. The putamen and the primary motor cortex were activated when patients with PD received the acupuncture treatment (VA vs. CP) and these activations correlated with individual enhanced motor function. Expectation towards acupuncture modality (CP vs. OP) elicited activation over the anterior cingulate gyrus, the superior frontal gyrus, and the superior temporal gyrus. These findings suggest that acupuncture treatment might facilitate improvement in the motor functioning of patients with PD via the basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuit.
Acupuncture therapy for the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. link here
Shulman LM, Wen X, Weiner WJ, Bateman D, Minagar A, Duncan R, Konefal J.
Department of Neurology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA. 2002 Jul;17(4):799-802.
Abstract
Interest in alternative medical treatments, including acupuncture, is increasing. Alternative treatments must be subjected to the same objective standards as all medical treatments. A non-blinded pilot study of the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of acupuncture (ACUPX) for the symptoms of Parkinson's Pisease (PD) was performed. Twenty PD patients (mean age, 68 years; disease duration, 8.5 years; Hoehn and Yahr [H&Y] stage, 2.2; Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale score [UPDRS], 38.7) each received acupuncture treatments by a licensed acupuncturist. All patients were treated with two acupuncture treatment sessions per week. The first seven patients received 10 treatments and the last 13 patients 16 treatments. Patients were evaluated before and after ACUPX with the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP); UPDRS; H & Y; Schwab and England (S & E); Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI); Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); quantitative motor tests, including timed evaluations of arm pronation supination movements, finger dexterity, finger movements between two fixed measured points, and the stand-walk-sit test; and a patient questionnaire designed for the study. Following ACUPX, there were no significant changes in the UPDRS, H&Y, S&E, BAI, BDI, quantitative motor tests, total SIP or the two SIP Dimension scores. Analysis of the 12 SIP categories not corrected for multiple comparisons revealed a post-ACUPX improvement in the sleep and rest category only (P = 0.03). On the patient questionnaire, 85% of patients reported subjective improvement of individual symptoms including tremor, walking, handwriting, slowness, pain, sleep, depression, and anxiety. There were no adverse effects. Acupuncture therapy is safe and well tolerated in PD patients. A range of PD and behavioral scales failed to show improvement following Acupuncture other than sleep benefit, although patients reported other discrete symptomatic improvements. A broad battery of tests in Parkinson's Disease patients suggested that Acupuncture resulted in improvement of sleep and rest. This finding needs to be verified using more in-depth and controlled evaluation of ACUPX for PD-related sleep disturbance. Copyright 2002 Movement Disorder Society