By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) – Hello Health Rounds Readers! Many of us have had sciatica, or know someone who’s had it, and today we feature a study that found the ancient practice of acupuncture can help to relieve the excruciating pain. We also cover an experimental device that could one day replace antibiotics for wound care, and a report on the association of exercise and hunger.
Acupuncture eases leg pain caused by a herniated disk
Acupuncture can alleviate pain and improve function in patients with chronic sciatica from a herniated disk, according to a Chinese study.
At six hospitals in China, researchers recruited 216 patients with herniated disks causing sciatica for at least three months and randomly assigned them to receive 10 sessions of acupuncture or sham acupuncture over 4 weeks.
Two standard scoring tools showed significantly greater improvements in the acupuncture group, they reported in JAMA Internal Medicine.
At week 4, scores on the visual analog scale for leg pain had decreased by an average of 30.8 mm in the acupuncture group versus 14.9 mm in the sham group.
Scores on the Oswestry Disability Index decreased by 13.0 points in the acupuncture group compared with 4.9 points in the control group after four weeks.
The improvements in the acupuncture group were still evident a year later, the researchers found.
An editorial published with the study called it methodologically rigorous and said “acupuncture adds an effective, evidence-based, non-pharmacological treatment to address a common chronic condition.”
Experimental electric patch kills wound bacteria
Early testing of a patch that delivers imperceptible electric currents to the skin demonstrated promising results as a potential alternative to antibiotics for killing bacteria in wounds and skin infections, researchers say.
“This opens up exciting possibilities for drug-free treatments, especially for skin infections and wound healing, where antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a serious challenge,” Bozhi Tian of the University of Chicago, who is helping to develop the patch, said in a statement.
Tian’s team tested whether Staphylococcus epidermidis, a common bacterium that can cause serious infections if it enters the body, would respond to electrical stimulation.
They found that small electric currents can elicit responses from S. epidermidis, but only in an acidic environment that’s found on healthy skin. Under the ideal acidic condition, the electricity treatment stopped 99% of the biofilm, a cluster of bacteria that blocks drugs and leads to persistent infections.
That was not the case in wounds that have trouble healing, because they are not acidic. To get around that, the researchers designed a skin patch that contains electrodes and a gel that provides an acidic environment.
In tests on pig skin inoculated with S. epidermidis, the team observed a significant decrease in biofilm coverage and nearly 10 times reduction in S. epidermidis cells compared to an untreated sample, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Device.
The researchers saw the same effect when they tested the patches on catheter surfaces.
With further research, they said they hope to develop a wearable patch with a wireless circuit to control infections without drugs.
Vigorous, not moderate, exercise curbs hunger
A vigorous workout does more to suppress hunger levels in healthy adults than moderate exercise, and females may be especially susceptible to this response, according to a small study.
“Our research suggests that high-intensity exercise may be important for appetite suppression, which can be particularly useful as part of a weight loss program,” study leader Kara Anderson of the University of Virginia said in a statement.
“Exercise should be thought of as a ‘drug,’ where the ‘dose’ should be customized based on an individual’s personal goals,” she added.
In eight men and six women, researchers analyzed the effects of exercise intensity on appetite and on levels of ghrelin, a hormone associated with perceptions of hunger.
After high-intensity exercise, ghrelin levels and appetites were lower than after moderate intensity exercise, Anderson said.
“Moderate intensity either did not change ghrelin levels or led to a net increase,” the researchers reported in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
Along with appetite, ghrelin is known to affect energy balance, glucose homeostasis, immune function, sleep, and memory.
The report points out that ghrelin is present in the blood in two different forms. Females had higher levels of total ghrelin at baseline compared with males, and one form of the hormone was reduced after intense exercise only in females, but the implications of these sex differences are unclear, the researchers said.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Bill Berkrot)
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