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| FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 file photo, Anah McMahon, L. Ac. adjusts one inch seirin acupuncture needles in the muscles around the spine of a patient to relieve lower back pain, at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in Chicago. Acupuncture gets a thumbs-up for helping relieve pain from chronic headaches, backaches and arthritis in a review of more than two dozen studies - the latest analysis of an often-studied therapy that has as many fans as critics. The new analysis was published online Monday, Sept. 10, 2012 in Archives of Internal Medicine. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) |
CHICAGO
(AP) — Acupuncture gets a thumbs-up for helping relieve pain from chronic
headaches, backaches and arthritis in a review of more than two dozen studies —
the latest analysis of an often-studied therapy that has as many fans as
critics.
Some
believe its only powers are a psychological, placebo effect. But some doctors
believe even if that's the explanation for acupuncture's effectiveness, there's
no reason not to offer it if it makes people feel better.
The new
analysis examined 29 studies involving almost 18,000 adults. The researchers
concluded that the needle remedy worked better than usual pain treatment and
slightly better than fake acupuncture. That kind of analysis is not the
strongest type of research, but the authors took extra steps including
examining raw data from the original studies.
The results
"provide the most robust evidence to date that acupuncture is a reasonable
referral option," wrote the authors, who include researchers with Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and several universities in England
and Germany.
Their study
isn't proof, but it adds to evidence that acupuncture may benefit a range of
conditions.
The new
analysis was published online Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine. The
federal government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
paid for most of the study, along with a small grant from the Samueli
Institute, a nonprofit group that supports research on alternative healing.
Acupuncture's
use has become more mainstream. The military has used it to help treat pain
from war wounds, and California recently passed legislation that would include
acupuncture among treatments recommended for coverage under provisions of the
nation's new health care law. That law requires insurance plans to cover
certain categories of benefits starting in 2014. Deciding specifics is being
left up to the states.
Some
private insurance plans already cover acupuncture; Medicare does not.
In
traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture involves inserting long, very thin
needles just beneath the skin's surface at specific points on the body to
control pain or stress. Several weekly sessions are usually involved, typically
costing about $60 to $100 per session. Fake acupuncture studied in research
sometimes also uses needles, but on different areas of the body.
Scientists
aren't sure what biological mechanism could explain how acupuncture might
relieve pain, but the authors of the new study say the results suggest there's
more involved than just a placebo effect.
Acupuncture
skeptic Dr. Stephen Barrett said the study results are dubious. The retired
psychiatrist runs Quackwatch, a Web site on medical scams, and says studies of
acupuncture often involve strict research conditions that don't mirror how the
procedure is used in the real world.
The new
analysis combined results from studies of patients with common types of chronic
pain — recurring headaches, arthritis or back, neck and shoulder. The studies
had randomly assigned patients to acupuncture and either fake acupuncture or
standard pain treatment including medication or physical therapy.
The authors
explained their statistical findings by using a pain scale of 0 to 100: The
patients' average baseline pain measured 60; it dropped to 30 on average in
those who got acupuncture, 35 in those who got fake acupuncture, and 43 in the
usual treatment group.
While the
difference in results for real versus fake acupuncture was small, it suggests
acupuncture could have more than a psychological effect, said lead author
Andrew Vickers, a cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The center
offers acupuncture and other alternative therapies for cancer patients with
hard-to-treat pain.
The
analysis was more rigorous than most research based on pooling previous
studies' results, because the authors obtained original data from each study.
That makes the conclusion more robust, said Dr. Andrew Avins, author of an
Archives commentary and a physician and researcher with the University of
California at San Francisco and Kaiser-Permanente.
Acupuncture
is relatively safe and uncertainty over how it works shouldn't stop doctors
from offering it as an option for patients struggling with pain, Avins said.
"Perhaps
a more productive strategy at this point would be to provide whatever benefits
we can for our patients, while we continue to explore more carefully all
mechanisms of healing," he wrote.
Online:
Archives: http://www.archinternmed.com
Acupuncture
at NIH: 1.usa.gov/igK6l
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