Acupuncture Study

[RAF]

Acupuncture's secret: Blood flow to brain
By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY
Acupuncture on pain-relief points cuts blood flow to key areas of the brain within seconds, providing the clearest explanation to date for how the ancient technique might relieve pain and treat addictions, a Harvard scientist reports today.Although researchers still don't fully understand how acupuncture works, "our findings may connect the dots, showing how a common pathway in the brain could make acupuncture helpful for a variety of conditions," says radiologist Bruce Rosen of Harvard Medical School (news - web sites). He'll release the findings at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Orlando.Rosen's team used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRIs, on about 20 healthy volunteers before, during and after acupuncture. This type of brain scan shows changes in blood flow and the amount of oxygen in blood. Researchers applied acupuncture needles to points on the hand linked to pain relief in traditional Chinese medicine. Blood flow decreased in certain areas of the brain within seconds of volunteers reporting a heaviness in their hands, a sign the acupuncture is working correctly, Rosen says. The needle technique is not supposed to hurt if done correctly. When a few subjects reported pain, their scans showed an increase of blood to the same brain areas. "When there's less blood, the brain isn't working as hard, " Rosen says. "In effect, acupuncture is quieting down key regions of the brain." The specific brain areas affected are involved in mood, pain and cravings, Rosen says. This could help explain why some studies have found acupuncture helpful in treating depression, eating problems, addictions and pain. The brain regions involved also are loaded with dopamine, a "reward" chemical that surges in reaction to everything from cocaine to food, beautiful faces and money. The reduced blood flow could lead to dopamine changes that trigger a "cascade" effect, releasing endorphins, the brain's natural pain-relieving and comforting chemicals, Rosen says.Rosen's study "is a very exciting first step," says neurobiologist Richard Hammerschlag of the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland, but controlled research on pain and addiction patients will be needed to prove the point. Brain scans should be done on patients getting acupuncture at real and bogus points, he says, and patients shouldn't know which group they're in.The placebo effect is so powerful it could affect blood flow, says UCLA neurobiologist Christopher Evans, a pain expert. There's even some evidence that placebos can increase brain chemicals, such as endorphins, Hammerschlag says.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...rain&printer=1

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Many thanks and.. <humble bows>.. for your efforts to shed light on this controversial subject.. your articles are not the "proof" required by some.. but, they certainly indicate potential and sincere interest by the growing numbers of scientific minds willing to look at alternative therapies.. it also offers hope that someday the East and West will combine forces to truly care for health of the common person..

Thanks again, and... Be well..

[RAF]

Hello TaiChiBob:

Yeah, I just post them without comment simply because people already have their minds made up. Commentary simply ends up people twisting and inventing clever ways to show how "your" perspective is wrong and how their's is right.

I enjoy reading the articles and keeping a file and, of course, narcissistically believe others also do, so I post them (LOL for taking myself too seriously).

Thanks and its always a pleasure reading your posts!

[RAF]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...e_dc&printer=1

Acupuncture Helps Chronic Headache Sufferers-Study
2 hours, 40 minutes ago Add Health - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - Acupuncture is a useful, cost-effective treatment for patients who suffer from chronic headaches or migraine, American researchers said on Monday.

In one of the largest randomized studies to assess the effectiveness of the ancient Chinese treatment, scientists found it worked better than just conventional treatments alone.

"People using acupuncture had fewer headaches, less severe headaches and they used less health resources over the course of the following year," Dr Andrew Vickers, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said in an interview.

The scientists compared acupuncture plus standard treatment to normal therapy alone in 401 patients in England and Wales who suffered from headaches several days each week. Their research is published online by the British Medical Journal.

Patients who had been assigned acupuncture plus standard treatment received up to 12 treatments over three months.

Initially there was not much difference between the two groups but at the end of the year-long trial the scientist noticed a big change.

Patients receiving acupuncture had 22 fewer days of headaches per year, used 15 percent less medication, made 25 percent fewer visits to their family doctors and took fewer days off sick than the other group.

There were not many side effects and Vickers and his colleagues also found that the treatment was cost effective.

"For severely affected patients, acupuncture reduced the severity and the frequency of their headaches to make a real difference in their lives," Vickers said.

Acupuncture was first used in China about 2,000 years ago, according to Vickers. It involves inserting very fine needles into the skin at specific points in the body. It is one of the most popular forms of complementary medicine and has been shown to relieve nausea and pain.

German researchers have also said it could help women undergoing fertility treatment to conceive.

[RAF]

Marin Independent Journal


Marin hospitals are taking an integrated approach with acupuncture
By Keri Brenner
IJ reporter

Monday, April 12, 2004 - Nurse Lisa Crespo's back pain started on her last day of work before New Year's Eve.

"I was lifting a patient to help assist him in getting back to bed," said Crespo, who works in a medical surgical unit of Novato Community Hospital. "I made sort of a twisting motion, and I felt a twinge in my middle and upper back."

In January, after pain pills, muscle relaxants and a cortisone shot all failed to provide much relief, Crespo decided to try acupuncture. She didn't have to go far.

Crespo's acupuncturist was a fellow hospital employee: Pat Sanders, a nurse practitioner and licensed acupuncturist at Sutter@ Work, an occupational medicine clinic at Novato Community and at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae.

With the introduction of acupuncture into a hospital setting, Marin is at the forefront of a growing national trend called "integrative medicine." A blend of conventional and non-conventional therapies, integrative medicine is expanding into major hospitals across the country - including Duke University Hospital in Durham, N.C., Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles - as research becomes available on applying alternative and complementary therapies to clinical practice.

"I was amazed at how well it worked and relieved the pain," said Crespo, who still is receiving regular treatments. "I actually believe in traditional medicine, where you take a pain pill if you're in pain, but the fact that you could stick a needle in and relieve pain, this is great."

Sanders, who started treating outpatients at the two Marin Sutter hospitals with acupuncture in March of last year, is the first full-time nurse practitioner/ acupuncturist on staff. At Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Terra Linda, licensed acupuncturist Elon Rosenfeld has been on staff for two and a half years, said Patricia Kendall, medical group administrator.

"A lot of people who are sent for acupuncture have been in pain for a long time, and nothing helped, so they really appreciate when it works," said Randee Allen, director of Kaiser Terra Linda's physical therapy department, where acupuncturist Rosenfeld is based. "It can be a life-changing thing for some people - they couldn't walk to the bus stop before, and now they can. It's a big thing for them."

Sanders was hired as a nurse practitioner at the two Marin Sutter hospitals in October 2000. An acupuncturist in private practice for more than 18 years, Sanders began developing the hospitals' acupuncture program protocols in December 2001. Approval for the program - which included reviews by more than a half-dozen hospital boards and committees - took more than two years after that.

Sanders primarily treats people with workplace injuries, such as Crespo. Those are patients with job-related conditions who are referred to the occupational health clinic, Sutter@Work, and who are covered by their employer's workers' compensation insurance.

This year, Sanders opened up the service to members of the public as well.

"The doctors were very excited," said Patrick Glover, director of Sutter's occupational health department, of Sanders' work. "Here was this actual nurse practitioner who also does this (acupuncture) - it helps her credibility in the physician community."

This summer, the occupational health clinics at the two Sutter hospitals will be consolidated into one facility at the new Sutter Terra Linda Health Plaza, planned for a 75,000-square-foot building at 4000 Civic Center Drive in San Rafael.

The Sutter hospitals also include acupuncture as a treatment option through the Institute of Health & Healing, a program operated in partnership with the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Licensed acupuncturist Andy Seplow treats outpatients on a part-time basis at the institute's Marin office at 5 Bon Air Road in Larkspur.

Unlike Sanders, Rosenfeld works out of the Kaiser Terra Linda physical therapy department, not at Kaiser's 10-year-old occupational health clinic, called Kaiser On the Job. Acupuncture through Kaiser On the Job - as well as at the physical therapy department - is done on a referral basis from the patient's primary physician, Kaiser administrator Kendall said.

Although acupuncture use in hospitals is on the rise, most of the country has been slow to pick up. A May 2003 American Hospital Association survey found only 16.7 percent of 1,005 U.S. hospitals queried were using any form of complementary or alternative medicine in 2002.

Area experts say acceptance is slow in some places, because the mixture of a 5,000-year-old Eastern philosophy with conventional Western medical theory is, by nature, a challenge.

For starters, Eastern and Western medical theories are quite different from each other, said Karen Reynolds, an acupuncturist in private practice in Walnut Creek and San Francisco who is also a registered nurse at Kaiser in San Francisco.

Eastern medical theory is based on diagnosing various patterns within the body, mind and spirit of the patient, while Western theory tends to be based on diagnosis by symptoms, Reynolds said.

"What the lay public doesn't understand is that Oriental medicine treats many things, not just pain," Reynolds said. "Oriental medicine treats digestive and gynecological problems and shen (spirit) disorders - such as depression - and it is immensely effective."

Reynolds, a board member of the California State Oriental Medical Association, notes that difficulties in translation also slow the process of integrating Oriental Medicine into Western clinical practice.

"Since it's new in this country, and a lot of the research is from China and Japan, there's a barrier to getting the research and it's hard for the American Medical Association to endorse it fully," she said.

Even though Kaiser has staff acupuncturists at all its Bay Area medical centers, Reynolds said she didn't apply for the positions because she knew she would not be treating the full range of conditions that she is able to treat in private practice.

Sanders, at the Marin Sutter hospitals, also acknowledges that she has had to make accommodations. Sanders said she is trained in Chinese herbology, but does not use it with her Marin hospital outpatients because Oriental medicine herbal treatments would be too difficult to arrange in a hospital setting.

She also doesn't do moxabustion, an herbal heat treatment, in the hospitals for the same reason, but does employ a special heat lamp that works in a similar manner. She also uses an electronic microcurrent stimulator device that is easy to control in a hospital setting.

"I try to keep things simple," Sanders said.

At Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Southern California, however, many barriers to integrative medicine have dissolved. Evan Ross, a licensed acupuncturist on staff at Cedars Sinai since 2001, said he sees 90 to 100 inpatients and outpatients a week for everything from stroke hemiparesis - or partial motor impairment - to post-chemotherapy nausea and vomiting.

"I just did a lecture to the liver transplant team," said Ross, 34, who received staff privileges at the hospital in January of last year. "They're thinking of using acupuncture in surgery, for post-op pain, and for nausea, vomiting and bowel problems, post-op, for patients who don't tolerate medicines and drugs."

Ross, whose specialty is "integrative oncology" for treating cancer patients, is called in regularly by patients' primary physicians for acupuncture consultations.

"I go in the ICU, I go anywhere in the hospital," he said.

Dr. Martin Rossman of Mill Valley, who in 1972 was one of the first Marin physicians to begin practicing acupuncture, called the introduction of acupuncture in hospitals "wonderful."

"Every step like this brings us closer to a real integration of acupuncture and Western medicine," said Rossman, a founding member of the American Academy of Acupuncture. "I don't think it matters where a person gets treated - it's more important whom they get treated by, the person's qualifications, their experience."

According to Nicholas Broffman of Pine Street Clinic, an Oriental medicine facility in San Anselmo, the fact that Marin hospitals are adding acupuncturists is a reflection of the county's progressive attitudes.

"In terms of Western openness to Oriental medicine, it's probably higher in Marin than elsewhere, compared to other smaller suburban counties," said Broffman, whose father, Michael Broffman, is clinic director and a licensed acupuncturist.

Nicholas Broffman said Pine Street, since its inception in 1982, has had an integrative medicine approach, working closely with Western physicians.

"When we started, there were about five acupuncturists practicing in Marin, but now there's about 175," Broffman added. "Certainly, Marin is at the forefront of integrative medicine."

Contact Keri Brenner via e-mail at kbrenner@marinij.com

Copyright and permissions

[RAF]

Doctor Says New Acupuncture Treatment Improves Sight
Provided by Albuquerque Journal on 4/26/2004
by Jackie Jadrnak


SANTA FE Most people would cringe at the thought of a needle in their eye.

Yet, earlier this month, Irene von Horvath lay serenely in Dr. Alston Lundgren's examining room, her lids closed, with a pin-cushion-like cluster of eight needles sticking out around her eyes.

No, the long, flexible needles weren't piercing her eyeballs, but sliding around the globe to tickle the optic nerve underneath. "Very rarely does it hurt," the 85-year-old Santa Fean said.

She is one of the pioneers in something Lundgren calls the Santa Fe Protocol, which he uses to treat macular degeneration, a disease that leads to deteriorating eyesight.

Most accepted medical treatments simply slow the progression of the disease, but Lundgren claims many of his patients actually are seeing better.

A family physician and board-certified medical acupuncturist, Lundgren readily admits that his procedure is not accepted among ophthalmologists, the medical specialists who usually treat such eye diseases.

But that's why he's working so hard to refine his technique and conduct studies to document his results. In a preliminary study published in the journal Medical Acupuncture, Lundgren reported that eight out of 10 patients had improved vision as measured by two different tests.

More recent results, he said, show 25 out of 34 patients could read between two and 15 additional lines on an eye chart after the treatments. He said the U.S. Air Force has gotten interested enough to launch a study of his technique in 50 patients.

His approach combines three elements: a stud embedded in the ear to stimulate a nerve there; four needles inserted around each eye to stimulate the optic nerve; and two needles in the chest at points to access the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The needles in the eyes and chests are attached to an electromagnetic current.

Lundgren said he started out by treating patients for 15 minutes, but now has extended the time to 35 minutes. Improvement seems to be cumulative the more total treatment time that people log, no matter how frequent the treatments, the better their eyesight seems to get, he said.

It works equally well in both the dry and wet forms of macular degeneration, according to Lundgren. In the dry form, reduced blood supply to the eye causes deterioration and a build-up of junk in the retina. In the wet form, blood vessels proliferate and leak blood into the retina.

Vitamin and mineral supplements have been tried to treat the dry form, and laser treatments have been used to cut off the leaking blood vessels in the wet form. In both cases, though, even if the treatments are successful, they generally only slow the progression of the disease without improving eyesight.

Lundgren, and some of his patients, say they have seen improvement.

Von Horvath said she is legally blind from the dry form of macular degeneration.

"I had gotten to the point I couldn't make out anything in reading material. I couldn't see the landscape anymore it all was quite blurred," she said.

She had several of Lundgren's treatments last summer, stopped when they didn't seem to be working, but then came back in the winter for more, getting two a week.

"Now I can make out the details in the trees. I can see the leaves, and whether they have big trunks or small trunks," von Horvath said. "I can see the outlines of the hills and mountains. It's very exciting to be able to see anything."

It's still a struggle to make out handwriting or to read more than a page or so of print, she said.

Carrie Piro of Rio Rancho calls her experience a success. She said her left eye was 20/80 and she couldn't see out of her right eye at all "everything was chopped up," she said in describing that eye's perceptions.

"I was driving, but I had gotten to where I didn't drive out of my neighborhood, because I didn't trust myself," said Piro, 73. "I couldn't use the sewing machine, because I couldn't see to thread the needle or see the stitches."

Outside the balcony of her apartment was a tree that had become very blurry when she looked at it, she said. The morning after her sixth acupuncture treatment, Piro said, "I walked out on my balcony, and I could see every leaf, every branch. It was amazing!"

Her left eye is now 20/30 and her right eye is 20/80, she said.

Piro said she asked her ophthalmologist about Lundgren's treatment and he advised her, "All you'll get out of it is a slim pocketbook."

When he saw her for a check-up after she had the treatments, she said, he told her, "I don't understand. Your vision is so much better."

Mary Hall, an Albuquerque woman who gives her age only as "over 80," said she had laser treatment on her one eye affected by macular degeneration, but didn't see any improvement in her vision after that.

After getting Lundgren's treatments, though, she said she has noticed her eyesight improve. "You feel as if you're a stuffed chicken," she said, laughing as she described the needles. But, in playing the piano, she can make out the difference between the flats and sharps better than she could before, she said.

When she looks out the front windows of her home, she still sees small waves in the usually smooth line of vision, but the distortion is far less than it used to be, Hall said.

"I'm hopeful," she said of the treatments, adding that she is a painter and would like to return to that pursuit.

Lundgren said there are a couple of possibilities about how the treatment might work. One is that the stimulation helps improve blood supply to the eye and revives visual cells that are dormant, but not destroyed.

Another is that the stimulation of the optic nerve actually sensitizes it so that it responds better to lower levels of visual stimulation.

Answering that question, though, would require researchers with more funding and more expensive equipment than he has, he said.

He noted that his studies don't meet the usual medical standard of double-blind, placebo-controlled research. That's when neither the health care provider nor the patient knows who is getting the real treatment and who is getting the dummy treatment. That works well with drugs, when you can use a dummy pill that looks the same as the real one, but doesn't apply well to acupuncture, he said.

Most physicians want to see such studies published in their peer-reviewed medical journals, though, before they will believe a treatment works.

With a wry smile, Lundgren said that he was trained as an engineer before he went into medicine.

"What I am doing is restoring function, and that's most important," he said.

And, he added, if a patient doesn't see improvement, he doesn't charge them for the treatments. Lundgren said his official price is $165 per treatment, but he usually gives patients their first five treatments at $40 each.

Medicare won't pay for the treatment, but some insurance companies are covering it for patients who don't qualify for Medicare, he said.

Information

Dr. Alston Lundgren will give a talk on his treatment for macular degeneration at 2 p.m. May 5 to the Macular Degeneration Support Group at Highland Senior Center, Monroe and Copper in Albuquerque.

Copyright 2004 Albuquerque Journal

[herb ox]

RAF

The last post re: macular degeneration is the most interesting report I've read in awhile - I've forwarded it to 2 of my dear friends, one with macular degeneration, the other an opthalmologist who specializes in treating the elderly. Perhaps they will investigate further.

peace

herb ox

[RAF]

Herb Ox:

I am really glad to hear that. I am doing research (academic) on the development and nature of TCM markets and collect the stories and research. I just post them here and hope they are interesting and maybe even useful.

Good luck with your friends!

[dwid]

It's interesting that these stories tend to back up what I've felt for a while now.

The dogmatic attachment to the theoretical foundation of TCM does it a disservice and if anything, hinders the process of mainstreaming the techniques. Western science is clearly not out to discredit this stuff wholesale. The research backs the efficacy of the techniques, it just tends to show that the mechanisms by which this stuff works are not those originally thought.

I think possibly the biggest obstacle to making much of traditional medicine a part of modern medicine is the zealots who say you can't have the baby without the bathwater, so to speak.

Good articles, by the way, RAF. Really interesting stuff.

[RAF]

dwid:

I've actually been pretty lucky to have known some elderly Chinese doctors, trained as MDs (John Hopkins), who have no problem embracing TCM, even within its own paradigm. The siply are pragmatic and open, especially if Western medicine fails. This controversy seems to me to be mainly found in the halls of Academia, where paradigms and models rule. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with a good healthy exchange except when it runs into political regulations and public policy.

I've actually had the opposite experience. A number of Western doctors simply throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They sort of take the approach that TCM is based on an antiquated system of beliefs, nothing can really come of it.

I try to strike a balance and remain open. Its pretty clear to me that there are a lot of unexplained mechanisms of Western medicine which is use is based on faith, intuitions, good guesses and not strict adherence to the scientific model. I like that opennes.

On the other hand, the TCM market is full of frauds and overall unsubstantiated claims that worry me sometimes.

I feel comfortable with TCM as a more or less means of preventative medicine, especially with regard to eating and liftestyle (check out yesterday's USA Today and see how the modern development of China, adopting developed countries eating patterns. is leading to a plethora of chronic diseases, including out of range levels of obesity.)

The two TCM practitioners I have known for years Dr. Chen Qing Ping (Canton, Ohio) and Dr. Ming Jin (Berea, Ohio) are both pretty sensible guys with fairly healthy views on Western medicine. In fact, they were both trained in Western medicine basics as part of their TCM curriculum.

Take care.

PS I hope you find your bagua. Maybe you can make it to our tournament in the fall, October. We are holding it on the campus of The University of Akron.

[dwid]

Sounds like you have a really healthy perspective on this stuff.

Thanks for the kind words at the end. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do regarding my continuing study.

I'll be in California from June to September, and then I start graduate school in Nursing in the Fall. I have a good feeling about things falling into place with my MA, so I'm pretty relaxed about it at the moment.

I'd love to attend the tourament in October. We'll see whether my schedule will permit it though. The first year of my program is supposed to be pretty **** grueling.

[RAF]

Firm Developing Accupuncture Pill

Thu Jul 29,10:36 PM ET

By ANSLEY NG, Associated Press Writer

SINGAPORE - A Singapore government-backed biotechnology firm says it is on track to developing an acupuncture pill, claiming to have put the traditional Asian method of using needles to address various physical ailments into a tiny capsule.

Tests on the pills are ongoing, and the pill is initially designed to cure migraines by "mimicking the effects of acupuncture," Molecular Acupuncture chief executive David Picard said.

Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years in many parts of Asia, where it's believed that *****ing a patient with stainless steel needles in strategic places helps nerve and circulatory functions. Oriental medicine views disease as a physical expression of imbalances in the body. Acupuncture and other treatments are designed to restore such balances.

By the end of the study in 2006, scientists would have collated blood samples from over 1,600 migraine sufferers in Singapore and China that will help identify genes and proteins that react to acupuncture, Picard said.

"The research is focused on understanding, from a biological standpoint, what acupuncture does in our body," he said.

The pill is designed to simulate a biological reaction similar that of acupuncture needles, he said.

Work began in Tianjin, China, last year, when an initial group of 60 migraine sufferers underwent acupuncture. Blood samples from those who responded were separated from those who did not respond to the needle treatment.

Research and development costs could reach US$20 million, Molecular Acupuncture said. The company received a grant from the city-state's Economic Development Board, said Picard, but declined to elaborate.

After years of relying on manufacturing, Singapore has been actively wooing biotechnology firms to set up base here as it tweaks its economy to cater to competition from China and India.

If the acupuncture pill to cure migraines is successful, Picard said they would attempt another pill to treat depression and addiction by utilizing the same method.

Picard said the firm was not trying to undermine traditional acupuncturists.

"I don't intend to change mindsets. There are people, especially in Asia, who are eager not to put chemicals in their bodies," said Picard. "They can stick to acupuncture."

One acupuncturist agreed.

"A pill is a pill. It might not work on acupoints on the body," said Chen Keng Leong, who has been practising acupuncture for over 20 years in Singapore.

[CFT]

Acupuncture points to post-op comfort
by Andy Coghlan

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996210

Acupuncture is a cheap and safe way of preventing people who have just had an operation from being sick or feeling nauseous. That is the conclusion of a review of 26 trials involving over 3000 patients.

Anna Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Mary Done of the New Children's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, focused on trials that studied the effects of "P6" treatment - stimulation of the "pericardium" (P6) acupuncture point on the wrist.

Patients receiving P6 acupuncture were 28 per cent less likely to feel nauseous and 29 per cent less likely to be sick than patients receiving sham treatments, such as insertion of the needle at the wrong place or pretended stimulation of P6.

They were also 24 per cent less likely to ask for anti-sickness drugs. Without treatment, post-operative nausea and vomiting is estimated to affect four out of five people who have had anaesthetics.

In head-to-head comparisons with routine anti-sickness drugs, acupuncture was equally good at preventing nausea and vomiting. The authors report that there were minimal side effects, and advocate P6 acupuncture as a safe and effective means of preventing post-operative sickness and nausea.

Journal reference: The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2004 (DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003281.pub2)

[RAF]

Acupuncture Helps Knee Pain, Study Finds

2 hours, 54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Acupuncture can help boost the power of drugs in reducing the pain suffered by patients with arthritis in their knees, researchers report.

Patients who got three-months worth of regular acupuncture treatments along with their normal arthritis care reported less pain and better ability to move than patients who got a sham acupuncture treatment, the researchers said.

"These data show that traditional Chinese acupuncture provides clinically important relief of pain and improvement in function in patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis when added to background therapy," said Dr. Marc Hochberg, a rheumatologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who worked on the study.

Hochberg and colleagues studied 570 patients for their study, presented Sunday night to a meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in San Antonio, Texas.

The patients, with an average age of 65, got either traditional Chinese acupuncture involving needled, sham acupuncture with the needles tapped at certain points but not inserted, or basic care including anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics.

The acupuncture patients got 23 treatments. Six months later the patients filled out a questionnaire called the WOMAC Osteoarthritis index. The sham acupuncture group reported a score of -2.92 for pain and -9.87 for movement, compared to -3.79 for pain and -12.42 for the group that got real acupuncture.

Osteoarthritis affects more than 17 million Americans over the age of 65 and in the knee is marked by a breakdown of cartilage.

[RAF]

Acupuncture, Herbs Ease Hay Fever

1 hour, 38 minutes ago

By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Regular sessions of acupuncture and daily doses of Chinese herbal medicine may help ease the burden of seasonal allergies, new research indicates.

A group of German investigators found that hay fever sufferers who received weekly acupuncture treatments and took three doses of a Chinese herbal formula per day showed fewer symptoms and were less likely to say their allergy was infringing on their daily activities than people who received a placebo treatment.

"There are additional options to conventional medicine," lead author Dr. Benno Brinkhaus of the Charite University Medical Center in Berlin told Reuters Health.

Brinkhaus suggested that people with seasonal allergies should consider acupuncture and herbs, but added that they should use it with caution, given that every treatment has side effects.

According to the report, published in the journal Allergy, the number of people with hay fever is growing in industrialized countries, affecting between 10 and 20 percent of the population.

Many of these patients are now opting for alternative medicine, including Chinese remedies, but few studies have rigorously examined their effects, Brinkhaus and colleagues note.

To investigate, the researchers asked 52 adults with moderate hay fever to try a combination of acupuncture and Chinese herbs or a placebo treatment. People given the placebo regimen had needles applied to non-acupuncture sites, and were given a non-specific Chinese herbal formula.

After 6 weeks, Brinkhaus and colleagues found that 85 percent of treated participants showed overall improvements in their hay fever, compared with only 40 percent of the comparison group.

More specifically, subjects who received the real treatment were more likely to report that their symptoms had decreased. They also tended to say their allergies were having less of an impact on their daily activities, such as sleep, everyday problems and general health.

People who got the genuine treatment were also twice as likely to experience a remission of their allergy, and had a bigger decrease in the number of drugs they took to relieve hay fever symptoms during the study period.

Patients given the real and sham treatment were equally likely to report side effects.

Brinkhaus noted that this study focused on people who already had symptoms, and acupuncture and herbs may be more effective when used before hay fever kicks in.

SOURCE: Allergy, September 2004.