"The effect of acupressure on fatigue in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome".

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) often experience fatigue that greatly affects their quality of life. We aimed to investigate the effectiveness of acupressure in alleviating CFS symptoms in office workers.

METHODS

We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 39 participants (28 women, 11 men; average age 29.54 ± 1.27). Participants were divided into treatment and control groups. The acupressure group received 10 sessions over 4 weeks, targeting specific acupoints (Li4, HT7, L9, P6, Gb20, Anmian, Du20, Yin-Tang, Sp6). Each point was stimulated for 30-90 s until numbness was felt; otherwise, stimulation lasted 90 s, totaling approximately 30 min per session. The control group did not receive any treatment. We assessed fatigue using the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), quality of life using the Short Form-36 (SF-36), and depressive symptoms using the Beck Depression Scale (BDS) before and after treatment. Data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0.

RESULTS

We observed a significant reduction in fatigue severity in the acupressure group compared to the control group, where fatigue severity increased (p = 0.009). The acupressure group also demonstrated significant improvements in depressive symptoms (p = 0.000) and various quality of life sub-parameters: physical function (p = 0.02), physical role difficulty (p = 0.002), emotional role difficulty (p = 0.007), energy (p = 0.002), and mental health (p = 0.05).

CONCLUSION

Acupressure effectively alleviates CFS symptoms, highlighting its clinical potential as an accessible complementary therapy for office workers with CFS. These findings support integrating acupressure into routine clinical practice and encourage further investigation into its long-term benefits.