Study on Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: It works! from CNN
Kristen Sparrow • September 14, 2012
Nice study that reviews high quality clinical acupuncture trials over the last decade, and for pain conditions showed a 50% reduction in pain scales. Of course, a loud voice was given to skeptics in the article too. But nice to see this on CNN!
Update: I missed this, the write up from New York Times.
Acupuncture works, one way or another – CNN.com
By Amanda Gardner , Health.com
updated 1:09 PM EDT, Tue September 11, 2012
CNN.com
Try Acupuncture, It Works!
(Health.com) — Many people with chronic pain swear by acupuncture, but skeptics of the ancient needle-based treatment have long claimed that it’s little more than an elaborate placebo.
A new study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine appears to at least somewhat vindicate the acupuncture believers.
After re-analyzing data from 29 high-quality clinical trials dating back to the 1990s, researchers have concluded that the pain relief derived from acupuncture is partly real, in that it can’t be ascribed entirely to the placebo effect.
The trials, which included roughly 18,000 people with chronic pain stemming from arthritis, headaches, or back and neck problems, all compared genuine acupuncture with one of two alternatives: treatment as usual, or “sham” acupuncture — a counterfeit (i.e. placebo) version of the treatment in which needles are inserted unsystematically.
Pain relief of 50% or more on a 100-point scale — pain that drops from a 60 to a 30, say — is a commonly used standard of effectiveness in pain research. By this measure, the study found, the effectiveness rates for real acupunture, sham acupuncture, and treatment as usual are 50%, 43%, and 30%, respectively.
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