Acupuncture Provides Relief for Chronic Pain

Acupuncture provides more effective relief for back and neck pain, osteoarthritis, and chronic headache than does usual care, with significant differences between true and sham acupuncture confirming that the practice is more than just a placebo.

Patients receiving true acupuncture showed pain scores that were 0.23 (95% CI, 0.13-0.33), 0.16 (95% CI, 0.07-0.25), and 0.15 (95% CI, 0.07-0.24) standard deviations lower than sham acupuncture controls for back and neck pain, osteoarthritis and chronic headache, respectively, in a primary analysis of 31 randomized controlled trials including 17,922 participants.

When compared with participants who received no acupuncture, pain scores were 0.55 (95% CI, 0.51-0.58), 0.57 (95% CI, 0.50-0.64), and 0.42 (95% CI, 0.37-0.46) standard deviations lower. 

"The average effect, as expressed in the meta-analytic estimate of approximately 0.5 [standard deviations], is of clear clinical relevance whether considered either as a standardized difference or when converted back to a pain scale," researchers wrote.

In their meta-analysis, researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City included only trials with pain of at least 1-month duration with primary endpoint being assessed at least 1 month after the beginning of acupuncture treatment.

“Acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a reasonable referral option,” they wrote, noting however that “these differences [in pain scale results] are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to the therapeutic effects of acupuncture.”

-Michael Potts