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Acupuncture for overactive bladder in female adult: a randomized controlled trial

  • Original Article
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Abstract

Purpose

To assess the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating female adult with overactive bladder.

Materials and methods

After we excluded other causes for storage symptoms, a total of 240 consecutive female patients with overactive bladder were enrolled and completed all aspects of this prospective randomized controlled trial, of which 118 cases were randomly assigned to receive a weekly acupuncture treatment (intervention group), while the other 122 cases were given a pharmacological treatment of oral tolterodine tartrate 2 mg twice daily (control group) for 4 weeks. Data on urgency, incontinence, micturition frequency, nocturia episodes and voided volume were collected and statistically analyzed before and after 4 weekly acupuncture treatments or 4 weeks’ pharmacological treatment using a 3-day micturition diary.

Results

The two groups of female patients with overactive bladder were given treatment with weekly acupuncture (n = 118), oral tolterodine tartrate (n = 122) for 4 weeks respectively. At weeks 4, subjects in both intervention and control groups had significant decreases in number of urinary urgency episodes, incontinence episodes, daytime frequency, nocturia episodes and increase in volume voided per micturition without a significant difference in the changes of overactive bladder symptoms between the groups. There were no serious adverse events during the study.

Conclusions

This randomized controlled trial demonstrates that acupuncture is safe with significant improvements in patient assessment of overactive bladder symptoms and may be considered a clinically alternative treatment for overactive bladder in female adult.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude and appreciation to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this study. Especially, special recognition goes out to Ms Lei Jing and Mr Yuan Leilei, whose support, encouragement and patience helped me all my life.

Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no financial relationships with other people or companies that can inappropriately influence our work.

Ethical standard

The study has been approved by the hospital and the local ethics committee and it conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China

    Zhengyong Yuan & Wei Tang

  2. Department of Urology, Dujiangyan Medical Center, Dujiangyan, China

    Changxiao He, Shibing Yan & Hanhui Wang

  3. Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Rehabilitation, Dujiangyan, China

    Donglai Huang

  4. Department of Urology, West China Medical Center, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Shibing Yan

Authors
  1. Zhengyong Yuan
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  2. Changxiao He
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  3. Shibing Yan
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  4. Donglai Huang
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  5. Hanhui Wang
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  6. Wei Tang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei Tang.

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Yuan, Z., He, C., Yan, S. et al. Acupuncture for overactive bladder in female adult: a randomized controlled trial. World J Urol 33, 1303–1308 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-014-1440-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-014-1440-0

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