Open Access

Winfried Banzer, Johannes Fleckenstein, Daniel Niederer, Kerstin Auerbach, Marcus Bernhörster, Andreas Rosenhagen, Markus Hübscher, Lutz Vogt

• Delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a common symptom in people participating in exercise, sport, or recreational physical activities. Several remedies have been proposed to prevent and alleviate DOMS. In 2008 and 2015, two studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of acupuncture on symptoms and muscle function in eccentric exercise-induced DOMS of the biceps brachii muscle. In 2008 a prospective, randomized, controlled, observer and subject-blinded trial was undertaken with 22 healthy subjects (22–30 years; 12 females) being randomly assigned to three treatment groups: real acupuncture (deep needling at classic acupuncture points and tender points; n = 7), sham-acupuncture (superficial needling at non-acupuncture points; n = 8), and control (n = 7). In 2015, a five-arm randomized controlled study was conducted with 60 subjects (22 females, 23.6 ± 2.8 years). Participants were randomly allocated to needle, laser, sham needle, sham laser acupuncture, and no intervention. In both cases treatment was applied immediately, 24 and 48 hours after DOMS induction. The outcome measures included pain perception (visual analogue scale; VAS), mechanical pain threshold (MPT), maximum isometric voluntary force (MIVF) and pressure pain threshold (PPT). Results: In 2008, following nonparametric testing, there were no significant differences between groups in outcome measures at baseline. After 72 hours, pain perception (VAS) was significantly lower in the acupuncture group compared to the sham acupuncture and control subjects. However, the mean MPT and MIVF scores were not significantly different between groups. This lead to the conclusion, that acupuncture seemed to have no effects on MPT and muscle function, but reduced perceived pain arising from exercise-induced DOMS. The more recent results from 2015 indicated that neither verum nor sham interventions significantly improved outcomes within 72 hours when compared with the no treatment control (P > 0.05).