Natural Glaucoma Treatments

Acupuncture for Glaucoma?

Acupuncture has been touted as a treatment for everything from the common cold to cancer. So it’s not surprising that glaucoma would be identified as yet another disease that could benefit from this treatment. But is there evidence that acupuncture can reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) or vision loss from glaucoma?

Early research on animals seemed promising. In the 1970s an experiment was conducted on dogs that had “experimentally induced glaucoma”. In this experiment dogs treated with acupuncture had a reduction in IOP.^[1] Experiments in humans with glaucoma, however, have not been very encouraging. Most studies of patients with glaucoma treated with acupuncture have failed to show any change in IOP or visual fields.^[2]

A 2013 review of the published studies that have evaluated acupuncture’s effect on glaucoma found one study that appeared to show a benefit. In this study the IOP of those patients who received acupuncture dropped by 4-5mmHg one month after initiating treatment. This effect, however, was not seen at any other time during the study (not before or after). Because of the poor quality of the study and the high risk of bias the authors of the review concluded that, “On the basis of currently available evidence, the benefit and harm of acupuncture as a therapeutic modality for glaucoma cannot be established.”^[3]

In 2015 a study of acupuncture as a treatment for primary open angle glaucoma was published in a respected ophthalmology journal by a group of highly regarded glaucoma specialists^[4]
The study included 11 patients who had undergone 12 sessions of acupuncture. At the end of the study no difference in IOP, visual fields, nerve fiber, or vision could be detected in those eyes for which acupuncture treatment had been applied. Indeed, immediately after acupuncture the IOP actually increased!