OBJECTIVE To investigate the benefit of adding acupuncture to a course of advice and exercise delivered by physiotherapists for pain reduction in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. DESIGN Multicentre, randomised controlled trial. SETTING 37 physiotherapy centres accepting primary care patients referred from general practitioners in the Midlands, United Kingdom. PARTICIPANTS 352 adu...

BACKGROUND Acupuncture is a frequently used but controversial adjunct to the treatment of chronic low back pain (LBP). Acupuncture is now considered to be effective for chronic LBP and health care systems are pressured to make a decision whether or not acupuncture should be covered. It has been suggested that providing such services might reduce the use of other health care services. Therefore,...

Although acupuncture theory is a fundamental part of the Huangdi Neijing, the clinical application of the needle therapy in ancient China was always a limited one. From early times there have been warnings that acupuncture might do harm. In books like Zhang Zhongjing's Shanghanlun it plays only a marginal role. Among the 400 emperors in Chinese history, acupuncture was hardly ever applied. Afte...

While healers and practitioners have used acupuncture to relieve pain for millennia, modern clinical trials assessing the efficacy of this approach yield seemingly inconsistent and contradictory results. For example, in multiple rigorous studies focusing on chronic lower back pain, acupuncture outperformed standard-of-care (eg, combination of drugs, physical therapy, and exercise); surprisingly...

Acupuncture is a complementary and alternative medical modality. A considerable body of acupuncture research has accumulated since 1998. Acupuncture has been integrated into palliative care settings in the United Kingdom but is yet to be widely offered in the United States. The literature was searched to identify clinical trials involving acupuncture, palliative care, hospice, chronic obstructi...

Background Little information exists regarding the use of acupuncture in combination with allopathic treatment of infertility. Objective To describe the use of acupuncture to stimulate follicle development in women undergoing in vitro fertilization. Design, Setting, and Patients Prospective case series of 6 women receiving intracytoplasmic sperm injection and acupuncture along with agents for o...

BACKGROUND Fibromyalgia is a common chronic pain condition for which patients frequently use acupuncture. OBJECTIVE To determine whether acupuncture relieves pain in fibromyalgia. DESIGN Randomized, sham-controlled trial in which participants, data collection staff, and data analysts were blinded to treatment group. SETTING Private acupuncture offices in the greater Seattle, Washington, m...

BACKGROUND The effect of acupuncture on sensory perception has never been systematically reviewed; although, studies on acupuncture mechanisms are frequently based on the idea that changes in sensory thresholds reflect its effect on the nervous system. METHODS Pubmed, EMBASE and Scopus were screened for studies investigating the effect of acupuncture on thermal or mechanical detection or pain...

Acupuncture is an effective, safe and convenient therapy that has been applied for 2,500 years. The acupuncture researches have obtained significant improvement with the technical support of the life sciences and the studies of acupuncture have in turn accelerated the development of biomedical science. The effects of acupuncture influence important physiopathologic and biological activities, in...

At the moment, modernization of acupuncture has a high priority. On the traditional side, acupuncture has only recently been awarded the status of Intangible Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO. On the innovative side, high-tech acupuncture is a registered trademark in Austria. Acupuncture has been used for medical treatment for thousands of years. A large number of empirical data are available but...