Background  In recent years, the problem of sleep disorder of marine personnel is prominent. previous studies showed auricular point sticking therapy is effective for treatment of insomnia.

  Objective  To evaluate the clinical efficacy of auricular point sticking therapy in the treatment of sleep disorders in marine personnel.

  Methods  Marine personnel with insomnia who met the inclusion criteria were recruited as subjects, and they were randomly divided into the auricular point sticking therapy group, the blank control group and the drug control group. Patients in the auricular point sticking therapy group were treated with auricular point sticking, while no treatment was performed in the blank control group, and for the drug control group, 1-2 mg estazolam tablets were taken at 30 minutes before sleep. All of them were treated for 7 days. Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) and Actiwatch were utilized to measure the sleep quality of the subjects before and after intervention therapy, to compare the improvement of sleep quality among the groups.

  Results  A total of 84 eligible insomnia marine personnel were included, with 28 cases in each group, they were all male with age of (28.07±4.82) years, and the course of disease was (6.54±1.56) months. Before treatment, there were no significant differences in age, course of disease, PSQI scores and sleep watch monitoring data among the groups. After 7 days, the scores of the blank control group showed no significant difference before and after treatment (P>0.05). The PSQI scores and sleep watch data of the auricular point sticking therapy group and the drug control group were significantly improved compared with those before treatment (P<0.05). After treatment, the sleep efficiency of the auricular point sticking therapy group was better than that of the blank control group (P<0.05). The improvement of PSQI scores, total sleep time and sleep interruption times in the auricular point sticking therapy group and the drug control group were better than those in the blank control group (P<0.05), the improvement of sleep latency time in the drug control group was better than that in the blank control group (P<0.05), while there was no significant difference in sleep watch data between the auricular point sticking therapy group and the drug control group (P>0.05).

  Conclusion  Auricular point sticking therapy can improve the sleep quality of marine personnel prominently with more obvious efficacy compared with traditional medicine for insomnia. It is simple and easy to operate, which is worthy of further popularization and application.