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Severe allergic asthma is difficult to manage even with guideline-recommended treatments, and some patients continue to have poor symptom control. This prospective randomised controlled trial investigated whether combining acupoint plaster therapy — a traditional Chinese medicine technique involving medicated patches applied to specific acupuncture points on the skin — with the biological medication omalizumab could offer greater benefits than omalizumab alone.
Fifty-six adults with severe allergic asthma were divided equally into two groups: one receiving omalizumab plus acupoint plaster therapy, and one receiving omalizumab alone. Participants were assessed at eight and sixteen weeks across a range of outcomes, including asthma symptom control scores, traditional Chinese medicine symptom scores, quality of life, inflammatory markers such as blood eosinophil counts and exhaled nitric oxide levels, and immune cell measurements.
At both time points, the combination group showed greater improvements in asthma control and traditional Chinese medicine symptom scores compared to the omalizumab-only group. By sixteen weeks, the combination group also showed superior reductions in inflammatory and immunological markers. No significant differences in lung function tests were observed between groups. Mild skin reactions at plaster sites occurred in a small number of participants in the combination group, and no serious adverse events were reported.
The authors acknowledge this is an exploratory study and call for larger, blinded, multi-centre trials with longer follow-up to confirm these findings. Conclusion: Adding acupoint plaster therapy to omalizumab appears to provide additional clinical, anti-inflammatory, and immunological benefits for adults with severe allergic asthma, though further large-scale research is needed.
Source: Tan Y, Yang Y, Li Y and colleagues. Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE (2026). View on PubMed (PMID 42631594) · doi:10.3791/71133
