Taste disorders

A taste disorder is a loss or distortion of the sense of taste. The 2017 Cochrane review uses three terms for it: ageusia, a lack of taste; hypogeusia, a reduced ability to taste; and dysgeusia, a distorted taste. The protocol of a German trial adds phantogeusia, a taste with nothing in the mouth to cause it, and parageusia, food that tastes wrong. The Cochrane review lists disease, drugs, radiation treatment and ageing among the causes, and some taste disorders have no known cause. The acupuncture literature on them is small: one sham-controlled trial in the Cochrane review, two randomised trials during chemotherapy published since, and case reports after radiotherapy.

The Cochrane review

The Cochrane review of interventions for managing taste disturbances by Kumbargere Nagraj and colleagues, published in December 2017 with searches to 4 July 2017, updates a first version from 2014. It included only taste disorders with no known cause or caused by zinc deficiency or chronic kidney failure, so taste changes from cancer treatment or infection fall outside it. It found 10 trials with 581 people: nine compared zinc supplements with placebo, and one, with 37 people, compared acupuncture with a sham procedure.

In that trial, of people with idiopathic dysgeusia or hypogeusia, the mean difference in taste discrimination between acupuncture and sham was 2.80 points (95% CI −1.18 to 6.78), and no adverse events were reported. The review rated the evidence very low quality and concluded that it was not sufficient to say what role acupuncture has in improving taste discrimination. No trial compared acupuncture with zinc, and none of the 10 reported quality of life in a form the review could pool. The German trial protocol describes the acupuncture trial as a pilot that needled selected body and ear points, and the AcuDysg report cites it as Brandt and colleagues, published in German in 2008. Europe PMC lists no Cochrane version after 2017.

Later reviews

No later review pools acupuncture trials for taste. The reviews below cover taste disorders after cancer treatment or COVID-19 and say what they found on acupuncture.

A 2022 protocol by Chao and colleagues registered a systematic review of acupuncture for taste disorders after COVID-19 with PROSPERO, the international register of reviews. AcuiQ found no published results in Europe PMC by October 2026.

Trials

• Chemotherapy, ear acupuncture against a control group, 2023. A pilot trial by Wang and colleagues randomised 73 people having platinum-based chemotherapy to auricular acupuncture, needling of the outer ear, or to a control group that the abstract does not describe as a sham. Of the 49 who completed it, the acupuncture group showed greater reductions than the control group in discomfort, general taste alteration and the total of the Chemotherapy-induced Taste Alteration Scale (all p < 0.05). The authors called the results preliminary.
• Chemotherapy, added points against the same acupuncture without them, 2026. The AcuDysg trial, led by Christine Huber and Claudia Witt at the University of Zurich, recruited at University Hospital Zurich and the Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen from February 2021 to January 2023. Its protocol was published in 2023. Everyone had cancer-related fatigue as well as dysgeusia during chemotherapy, and everyone received eight weekly sessions of acupuncture for fatigue at XH03 (Yintang), XH16 (Anmian), SP06 (Sanyinjiao) and LV03 (Taichong), with an eLearning course in self-acupressure. The intervention group also received LI02 (Erjian), LI04 (Hegu) and two points under the tongue, XH12 (Jinjin) and XH13 (Yuye), and learned to press them. The trial enrolled 21 people, 11 and 10, of a planned 130, so every analysis is exploratory. Perceived dysgeusia fell by 0.30 points a session on a 10-point scale in both groups, 2.4 points over eight sessions. The groups did not differ: the estimate was 0.72 points in favour of the control group (95% CI −0.88 to 2.32), and on a taste test 0.28 points (95% CI −1.32 to 1.88). No serious adverse events occurred. The authors noted that participants scored as having normal taste on the test at baseline, and that both groups knew they would receive acupuncture, which may have raised their expectations.

Neither trial compared real acupuncture with a sham. In AcuDysg both groups were needled, so it tested whether the added points did more than acupuncture aimed at fatigue. Sham acupuncture sets out what each kind of control can rule out, and Cancer-related fatigue covers the other condition its participants had.

After radiotherapy to the head and neck

AcuiQ found no reported randomised trial of acupuncture for taste loss after head and neck radiotherapy. A 2020 case report by Djaali and colleagues describes a 65-year-old man who lost his sense of taste after 30 sessions of radiotherapy, 60 Gy, for laryngeal cancer. He received acupuncture twice a week at points including ST36 (Zusanli), ST40 (Fenglong) and LI04, with ear points, and his taste improved after 12 sessions. A 2018 chart study by Ben-Arye and colleagues in an integrative oncology service in northern Israel followed 34 people with taste disorders from chemotherapy; acupuncture and herbal preparations applied in the mouth were the treatments used most, and 29 reported less severe symptoms. Neither had a control group.

A single-blind phase II trial at West China Hospital, Sichuan University, posted in February 2024, compares real with sham acupuncture for mouth complications of head and neck radiotherapy, with taste measured by patients, by electrogustometry, which tests taste with a weak current, and by taste strips. It lists 138 people as its target; its registry status is unknown, last verified in February 2024. Dry mouth after radiotherapy covers the trials of acupuncture for dry mouth after the same treatment.

After COVID-19

The randomised trials of acupuncture after COVID-19 that AcuiQ found in Europe PMC measured smell, not taste. A 2024 trial by Mohebbi and colleagues at Rasoul Akram Hospital randomised 40 people with lasting loss of smell to two sessions of ear acupuncture or of a switched-off laser, alongside steroid nose drops, and rated smell on a 10-point scale. A 2025 pilot by Armstrong and colleagues randomised 30 people to nasal irrigation and smell training with or without ten sessions of acupuncture; 18 completed, and the authors reported it as a feasibility study.

What guidelines say

The ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines on orphan symptoms, published in November 2020 by Santini and colleagues for the European Society for Medical Oncology, cover dysgeusia from chemotherapy and radiotherapy. They cite the Cochrane finding on acupuncture without making a recommendation on it. Their recommendation is that patients be told about dietary counselling and self-care strategies (evidence level II, grade B); zinc is limited to people with zinc deficiency (II, C), and amifostine, a drug that protects the salivary glands, is not recommended (II, D). AcuiQ found no update in Europe PMC by October 2026.

The 2010 systematic review of dysgeusia from cancer treatment by Hovan and colleagues, for the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer and the International Society of Oral Oncology (MASCC/ISOO), covered 26 papers published from 1990 to 2008. Its abstract names zinc sulfate, amifostine and nutritional counselling and not acupuncture, and concludes that there does not appear to be a predictable way of preventing or treating dysgeusia. AcuiQ found no later MASCC/ISOO review of dysgeusia in Europe PMC. Nausea from chemotherapy covers another effect of chemotherapy.

What the reviews could not settle

Whether acupuncture differs from sham for any taste disorder rests on one trial of 37 people with idiopathic taste loss, whose confidence interval includes no difference. For taste changes during chemotherapy, the 2023 pilot had no sham and lost a third of its participants, and AcuDysg enrolled a sixth of its target. The German sham-controlled trial of a single session of acupuncture under the tongue at XH12 and XH13, in people with breast cancer and phantogeusia during chemotherapy, has been recruiting since January 2015 and lists December 2027 as its estimated completion. Its protocol planned 75 people across real acupuncture, a non-penetrating sham beside the same points, and dietary advice.

The trials also measure taste differently, with self-rated scales, symptom questionnaires and taste tests; the AcuDysg authors questioned the usefulness of the objective tests and suggested that self-rating may be enough. Cochrane’s review predates every cancer trial above, and its scope excludes them.

AcuiQ’s taste loss and dysgeusia pages list the protocols individual studies prescribed, each with its citation.