Bee Sting Therapy Kills Woman after Two Years

Acupuncture is controversial treatment among the medical community as scientists couldn’t reach a consensus on its benefits. Past studies revealed that the therapy could help fight off depression and chronic pain.

Nevertheless, acupuncture that involves bees instead of needless, aka the bee sting therapy, has become even more controversial as the method led to the death of a woman recently.

Hugh MacPherson, who studies acupuncture at the University of York in the U.K., notes that the research focused on the therapy includes many variables. For instance, depression is not a “single disease entity,” according to MacPherson.

He underlined that depressed people who underwent acupuncture fared a lot better than their peers who took only antidepressants.

However, there is another form of acupuncture that doesn’t involve needles. Bee sting therapy or apitherapy promises to treat certain conditions with venom from bees. Acupuncturists use live bees on a person’s body and prompts them to sting certain points on the body.

Apitherapy Not Safe

Some believe that the therapy prevents cancer, while others say that it could be a placebo. In 2015, a study revealed that 29% of people who underwent apitherapy had side-effects.

• Earlier this year, a 55-year-old Spanish woman undergoing bee sting therapy died.
• Before entering a coma, which proved fatal, she experienced “wheezing, dyspnea, and a sudden loss of consciousness”.

Her blood pressure dropped so much that she entered a coma to die from organ failure days later. The woman had been undergoing bee sting therapy for the last couple of years with no issues.

Doctors found that the woman died from an allergic reaction to bee venom through repeated exposure. Since she was receiving apitherapy every month her exposure to the allergen was higher than in regular people, which led to her death.

Researchers who conducted a study about the case do not recommend the therapy as it is “unsafe”.
Image Source: Flickr