Acupuncture Times Your guide to acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine and TCM — explore acupoints, herbs and formulas, plus the latest acupuncture research news.
Related Articles
Drug addiction is notoriously difficult to treat, and acupuncture – especially ear (auricular) acupuncture – has long been used as a supportive therapy. This systematic review and network meta-analysis weighed up the evidence.
The researchers analysed 35 randomised controlled trials covering 15 types of intervention and 2,812 participants. The body points used most often were Pericardium 6, Stomach 36 and Spleen 6, along with the ear points Shenmen, Sympathetic and Lung.
Acupuncture therapies – particularly when added to usual care – were associated with improved addiction symptoms, although the size of benefit varied by symptom. Treatment duration mattered: for withdrawal symptoms, longer courses (more than 20 days) gave more consistent results. Favourable trends for manual and auricular acupuncture in depression and anxiety were based on fewer studies and should be read with caution.
Conclusion: acupuncture looks like a promising add-on to standard addiction care, with longer treatment courses appearing more reliable. Stronger trials would help confirm which approaches work best.
Source: Zhao H, Jang JH, Ryu YH, and colleagues. Front Hum Neurosci. 2026. View on PubMed (PMID 42245914)
This is a plain-language summary of a published study, provided for general information; please refer to the original paper for full details.
