NCT01178008

Pilot Study on the Use of Acupuncture for Postpartum Depression

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 20 (actual)
• Sponsor: The University of Hong Kong · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The proposed study is a randomized controlled trial to examine the efficacy and safety of active acupuncture versus placebo acupuncture for the treatment of postpartum depression. The investigators hypothesis is that active acupuncture would be superior to placebo acupuncture in the short-term treatment of postpartum depression.

Detailed description

This study will be a randomized, controlled, subject- and assessor-blind trial in patients with postpartum depression. Eligible subjects will be randomly assigned to active acupuncture or placebo acupuncture. The subjects will receive acupuncture treatment twice per week for 4 consecutive weeks. The acupuncturist of this trial will not participate in data collection and data entry. The trial assessor will be blind to the subjects' treatment allocation.

Conditions

• Post-partum Depression

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
PROCEDURE	Active acupuncture	Active acupuncture regimen consists of electroacupuncture stimulation on cranial and body acupoints which are empirical for treating depression in term of traditional Chinese medicine theory. It is done by a registered Chinese medicine practitioner with at least 3 years experience of providing acupuncture treatment. An electric-stimulator is connected to these needles to give an electric-stimulation in a continuous wave The needles will be left for 30 min and then removed. Acupuncture treatment will consist of two sessions per week for 4 consecutive weeks.
PROCEDURE	Placebo acupuncture	Streitberger's non-invasive acupuncture needles will be applied to serve as placebo control at the same acupoints and the same stimulation modality, except that the needles only affixed on the skin with adhesive tapes instead of insertion. Since all the points used are beyond patients' vision as they lay on bed, they could not visualize the acupuncture procedure. The acupuncturist, setting, treatment frequency, and duration of the treatment course are the same as the active acupuncture group.

Timeline

• Start date: 2010-05-01
• Primary completion: 2011-12-01
• Completion: 2012-06-01
• First posted: 2010-08-09
• Last updated: 2013-01-16

Locations

3 sites across 1 country: Hong Kong