Effectiveness of Acupuncture for Depressed Patients Not Taking Antidepressant Medications
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01634022. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
Effectiveness of Acupuncture on Treating Major Depressive Disorder
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Acupuncture is a popular complementary/alternative therapy that has been in use for thousands of years for the treatment of various medical and psychiatric conditions, including Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). In this study, the investigators applied the investigators acupuncture-treatment-for-depression protocol, based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) principles for treating MDD, to depressed patients not taking any antidepressant medications (a protocol that the investigators previously piloted as a medication augmentation therapy for partial responders with MDD). The investigators specifically investigated the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of this TCM-based protocol for such patients, as well as potential differences in outcomes between weekly vs. twice-weekly treatment. The investigators hypothesized that acupuncture monotherapy would be associated with a response rate of at least 50%, which the investigators defined as a decrease in depressive symptoms from the beginning to the end of the study of 50% or more, and that the response would be greater among patients who received acupuncture 2 times per week (vs. 1 time per week). The investigators also hypothesized that acupuncture would be associated with minimal side effects.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT01634022
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 64 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 65 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Apr 30, 2005
- Primary completion
- Oct 31, 2011
- Completion
- Oct 31, 2011
- Last update posted
- Jul 5, 2012
2005 – 2011
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital | Boston | Massachusetts | 02114 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01634022, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Jul 5, 2012 · Synced Sep 4, 2026
Related: full search, browse by condition, browse by drug or therapy, browse by sponsor, browse by U.S. city.
Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT01634022 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.