Acupuncture is the practice of applying needles to target specific pressures points in the body. Since originating in China, acupuncture has been practiced for thousands of years to treat numerous conditions.
There haven’t been many good scientific studies to categorically show whether acupuncture works in treating hair loss or not. An article published in Frontiers in Medicine 2022 looked at available literature which mainly consisted of case studies. Although there was same evidence in some form of efficacy, conclusions that can be drawn regarding acupuncture in hair loss are severely limited as the majority of studies did not evaluate acupuncture alone as other herbal applications were used in conjunction with acupuncture.
Only a handful of controlled trials have been performed with the majority of evidence being in case-reports. Language also served as a major limitation as studies were in Chinese and South Korean.
Also, there was an absence of standardization of acupuncture techniques and clinical endpoints across the studies that were reviewed. In the majority of studies examined other complementary and alternative medicine practices were carried out in combination with acupuncture, making it difficult to determine which treatment resulted improvement in hair loss.
As it stands, there is no clear evidence that acupuncture works as good as current therapies to treat hair loss.
The way forward should include performing randomized controlled studies assessing the efficacy of acupuncture alone in comparison to current first-line treatments for alopecia like minoxidil and Finasteride