Auricular Acupressure for Pain Relief in Adolescents with Dysmenorrhea: A Placebo-Controlled Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Primary dysmenorrhea is a common problem among menstruating adolescents and young women. It may cause physical distress and result in school absenteeism and reduced physical activity. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of auricular acupressure on menstrual pain and distress in adolescents with dysmenorrhea. DESIGN: A single-blind, placebo-controlled design was used. SETTING/LOCATION: Participants were obtained from one senior high school in northern Taiwan. SUBJECTS: One hundred and thirteen (113) adolescent participants with primary dysmenorrhea were recruited and assigned to the experimental or control group by a coin toss. INTERVENTION: The experimental group received auricular acupressure applied to six true acupoints (shenmen, Kidney, Liver, Internal Genitals, Central Rim, and Endocrine). The control group received six sham acupoints without effects on dysmenorrhea. All participants were instructed to press each acupoint for 1 minute, 4 times a day for 2 days. OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcomes were assessed by rating dysmenorrhea severity on a visual analogue scale (VAS) and using the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) and Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ). RESULTS: Between-group differences were found in VAS and MDQ after the interventions. Within-group differences were found in the score changes of VAS, MDQ, and SF-MPQ during the interventions for both groups. CONCLUSIONS: Auricular acupressure relieves menstrual pain and distress in high-school adolescents. The findings may serve as a basis for using auricular acupressure to treat dysmenorrhea in adolescents. There was pain reduction with sham as well as with true acupoint acupressure, but the latter was significantly greater. The sham acupoint may not be used as a control for auricular acupoint and qualitative evaluation of dysmenorrhea should be added to the evaluation by SF-MPQ in future studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".