Washington, Dec 30 : Acupuncture not only reduces hot flashes of breast cancer patients but it also perks up their sex drive and sense of well-being.

A Henry Ford Hospital (HFH) study shows that acupuncture, as compared to drug therapy, has a longer-lasting positive effect on women receiving hormone therapy for breast cancer.

They also reported improvement in energy levels and clarity of thought, in the first ever randomly controlled trial to compare acupuncture and drug therapy.

"Acupuncture offers patients a safe, effective and durable treatment option for hot flashes, something that affects the majority of breast cancer survivors," says Eleanor Walker, radiation oncologist at the HFH, who led the study.

The National Cancer Institute estimates that one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. For them, conventional medical treatment involves chemotherapy and five years of hormone therapy.

With such a prolonged course of treatment, side-effects of hormone therapy such as vasomotor symptoms - hot flashes and night sweats - can become a major cause of decreased quality of life, and even discontinuation of treatment.

Venlafaxine (Effexor) has been the drug therapy of choice to manage these common and debilitating side effects associated with the condition. Venlafaxine, however, comes with its own set of side effects: dry mouth, decreased appetite, nausea and constipation.

Walker and her team decided to test the use of acupuncture to combat vasomotor symptoms in breast cancer patients as an alternative to drug therapy.

Accordingly, 50 patients, recruited from oncology clinics at Henry Ford, were randomly assigned to receive either acupuncture or venlafaxine treatment for 12 weeks.

Both the groups were initially found to experience 50 percent decline in hot flashes and depressive symptoms, indicating effectiveness of acupuncture as drug therapy, says an HFH release.

Differences, however, between the two groups began to emerge two weeks post-treatment: The acupuncture group continued to experience minimal hot flashes, while the drug therapy group had a significant increase in hot flashes.

The findings were published online this week in the Journal of Oncology.