Acupuncture, the ancient Chinese practice of sticking needles into a patient at specific points to relieve pain and treat other conditions, seems to alleviate pain just barely better than sticking needles into non specified parts of the body, a new analysis shows.
The studies enrolled 3,025 people in all. In each, the participants were randomly assigned to get one of the three therapies. Decreases in pain, if any, were recorded using standard pain scales.
On average, people getting acupuncture or sham acupuncture — in which needles are stuck into body areas not targeted by acupuncturists — sensed a clear decrease in pain, whereas those getting standard care sensed considerably less improvement.
People getting real acupuncture reported a little more pain relief than those getting the sham needle sticks, but this slight difference was insignificant from a clinical perspective, says study coauthor Asbjørn Hróbjartsson, a physician and epidemiologist at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.
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