As reported yesterday by Amanda Gardner at Health.Com (and re-posted on CNN.Com), "Acupuncture Works, One Way or Another." The article reports on a recently published meta-analysis of 29 studies comparing pain relief from real acupuncture to placebo acupuncture (usually needles that are placed outside of known pressure points) to no treatment.
The common measure of efficacy for such studies is a 50 percent reduction in pain, as measured on a 100 point scale (dropping from 80 to 40 for example). Accordingly, real acupuncture achieved this rate of pain reduction 50 percent of the time, placebo acupuncture met this mark 43 percent of the time, and people who weren't needled at all felt this level of pain relief 30 percent of the time.
This is better than acupuncture's usual showing. In many studies, it does no better than placebo. On the other hand, about two thirds of the difference in pain relief between no treatment and acupuncture is accounted for by placebo.
This likely isn't the final word on the efficacy of acupuncture. But I'd like to bring up one other interesting finding about the treatment. A few years ago, the German health authorities (the volks who decide what treatments will be covered under their national healthcare plan) compared acupuncture to sham acupuncture and to several other known (and already covered) treatments for chronic lower back pain, including medication and physical therapy. Acupuncture did no better than sham acupuncture in these trials. But both real and sham acupuncture beat the therapies that were already approved!
The common measure of efficacy for such studies is a 50 percent reduction in pain, as measured on a 100 point scale (dropping from 80 to 40 for example). Accordingly, real acupuncture achieved this rate of pain reduction 50 percent of the time, placebo acupuncture met this mark 43 percent of the time, and people who weren't needled at all felt this level of pain relief 30 percent of the time.
This is better than acupuncture's usual showing. In many studies, it does no better than placebo. On the other hand, about two thirds of the difference in pain relief between no treatment and acupuncture is accounted for by placebo.
This likely isn't the final word on the efficacy of acupuncture. But I'd like to bring up one other interesting finding about the treatment. A few years ago, the German health authorities (the volks who decide what treatments will be covered under their national healthcare plan) compared acupuncture to sham acupuncture and to several other known (and already covered) treatments for chronic lower back pain, including medication and physical therapy. Acupuncture did no better than sham acupuncture in these trials. But both real and sham acupuncture beat the therapies that were already approved!
No comments:
Post a Comment