Acupuncture effectively reduces pain according to research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Acupuncture groups had significantly greater reductions of pain than both non-treatment control groups and sham (imitation/placebo) control acupuncture groups in multiple high quality studies. Specifically, acupuncture was found effective for reducing pain associated with osteoarthritis, chronic headache, shoulder pain, nonspecific musculoskeletal pain, neck pain and back pain.
The researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York and Technical University, Munich underscored the importance of this latest research. They note that prior meta-analyses and systematic reviews of acupuncture for the treatment of pain included research of “variable quality.” In this new study, the scope was “restricted to high-quality trials.”
The researchers started with 31 eligible studies with a total of 19,827 patients. Studies were accepted only from the United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Sweden. Only studies with controls were included. Controls included no-acupuncture and sham/placebo acupuncture. All studies were conducted between 1996 and 2008. The researchers refined the studies down to 29 from the original 31 to preserve the highest quality evidence profile.
