"Hot flashes  the bane of existence for many women during menopause  can be reduced in frequency by almost half for about  percent of women over eight weeks of acupuncture treatment according to scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.  In a study published in the Sept.  issue of the journal Menopause scientists reported that about half the women in the study reduced the frequency of hot flashes while half did not.  Women bothered by hot flashes and night sweats may want to give acupuncture a try as a relatively lowcost lowrisk treatment said Nancy Avis Ph.D. lead author of the study and professor of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest School of Medicine a part of Wake Forest Baptist. Women will know pretty quickly if acupuncture will work for them. Women who had a reduction in their hot flashes saw a benefit beginning after about three to four weeks of weekly treatments.  The National Institutes of Healthfunded study was designed to examine different patterns of responses to acupuncture. Participants included  perimenopausal and postmenopausal women ages  to  who had on average at least four hot flashes or night sweats per day. Women were randomized to receive up to  acupuncture treatments within six months or to a control group. Of the  women who received acupuncture a small group of women . percent had an  percent reduction in hot flashes by the eighth week of the study Avis said. Fortyseven percent of the study group reported a  percent reduction over this same time frame. However  percent showed only a minimal reduction of . percent in frequency of hot flashes while  percent reported a  percent increase in hot flashes. We had hoped to identify some of the characteristics of the women who benefitted from acupuncture but like so many treatments we could not really tell ahead of time who would benefit Avis said. Funding for the study was provided by grant RAT from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at NIH. Coauthors include Beverly Levine Ph.D. Scott Isom M.S. and Timothy Morgan Ph.D. of Wake Forest Baptist and Remy R. Coeytaux M.D. Ph.D. of Duke University School of Medicine.  Disclosure Coeytaux has a financial interest in an organization involved in recruiting study subjects and administering acupuncture treatments at one of the two study sites. His spouse is the primary shareholder of Chapel Hill Doctors which is an organization that was subcontracted by Wake Forest School of Medicine as a site for subject recruitment and treatment."