Is Auriculotherapy Responsible for Improvements on Anxiety Students' Prior and After Examinations?

Universidade do Porto

Status: Completed

Conditions: Anxiety

Treatments: Other: Auriculotherapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05042778

ESSSMUporto

Details and patient eligibility

About

As the investigators have shown before, there was a tendency for a reduction of anxiety levels on university students after 30 minutes, with auriculotherapy treatment before examinations have started. However, the effect was effective and clinically significant after 48 hours comparing auriculotherapy with placebo and no treatment. In this sense, the investigators intend to perform a new study with a large sample and introduce a new hypothesis. So, this study aims to detect the clinical effect of two auriculotherapy techniques on the anxiety levels of university students.

Full description

To treat anxiety, conventional medicine relies on medicines such as benzodiazepines, antidepressants, barbiturates, and antihistamines. However, several authors have reported western medicine cannot resolve all anxiety diseases and the risk of side effects, resistance to pharmacological treatments affects approximately one in three patients with anxiety disorders.

Alternatively, auriculotherapy is a technique similar to reflexology. It is speculated the technique might work in anxiety because groups of pluripotent cells contain information from the whole organism creating regional organization centres representing different parts of the body, through the recruitment of more cortex cells dedicated to specific body areas. Thus reflex points in the ear can incite body responses by the stimulation of reticular formation and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The information that comes from the thermal, Algic and proprioceptive stimuli are transmitted from the auricular pavilion by the fibres of the nerves: trigeminal; Auricular magnum and minor occipital (sensitive branch of the cervical plexus) and the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is responsible for the parasympathetic innervation of the lung, heart, stomach, and small intestine, as well as the pharynx and larynx muscles and it also sends information to important brain regions (e.g., locus coeruleus, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampus and at amygdala) in the regulation of anxiety. In turn, the trigeminal nerve controls, mainly, the mastication muscles and the facial sensitivity while the cervical plexus nerve is responsible for neck muscles, diaphragm, and thorax.

Enrollment: 26 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• University students
• Unfamiliar with auriculotherapy,
• No psychological disorders measured through Brief Symptom Inventory scale.

Exclusion criteria

• Students having any neurological disease, cardiovascular disease, renal disease or any chronic disease, such as diabetes or hypertension.
• Pregnants.
• Under psychiatric medication.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

---

26 participants in 2 patient groups

Auriculotherapy

Experimental group

Description:

Indwelling fixed semipermanent needles embedded in a skin-colored adhesive tape will be used in active points around the vagus nerve stimulation area.

Treatment:

Other: Auriculotherapy

No intervention

No Intervention group

Description:

No auriculotherapy will be applied.