World’s largest conference on acupuncture to convene in China
Xinhua - More than 1,500 acupuncturists from nearly 30 countries and regions will gather in Beijing this October, to discuss the future of traditional Chinese medicine. Read more
Take a break - YouTube acupuncture
A Netherlands insurance commercial involving a guy getting needles placed all over his body (a Chinese healing technique). Watch to find out what happens next!
Placebo effect may be at play in acupuncture studies: analysis
Reuters Health - Acupuncture can bring some relief to people with knee arthritis, but the benefits may be at least partly from a placebo effect, a new research review suggests.
In an analysis of 9 clinical trials from the past 15 years, researchers found that acupuncture generally seemed to improve knee arthritis sufferers’ pain and stiffness in the short term. The patients had osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease associated with age, as opposed to arthritis associated with an autoimmune disorder.
However, a closer look showed that the benefits were limited to trials that compared acupuncture with doing nothing or with “usual care,” such as anti-inflammatory medication.
In trials that compared acupuncture with “sham” acupuncture, on the other hand, there was no clear evidence that the real therapy was more effective.
Sham acupuncture is accomplished by using non-penetrating needles, or inserting needles only into the superficial layer of skin, at random sites rather than the specific points used in real acupuncture. In studies that evaluated electro-acupuncture, the sham version involved phony electrodes and “mock” electrical stimulation of acupuncture points.
The point is to keep study participants from knowing whether they were receiving the real or the placebo treatment. This helps separate the specific effects of a therapy from any placebo effects — where people feel better simply because they believe they’ve been treated.
The new findings suggest that the benefits of acupuncture for knee arthritis are at least partly due to patients’ expectations, the study authors report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
However, that doesn’t mean acupuncture is not worthwhile, according to the researchers, led by Eric Manheimer of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Research does suggest that acupuncture has a “genuine biological effect,” and there was evidence in some studies that the real therapy resulted in somewhat better short-term effects than sham acupuncture, the researchers note.
For their study, Manheimer and his colleagues combined the results of nine clinical trials conducted in Europe, the U.S. and Thailand. The trials included a total of more than 3,500 subjects.
Each trial included a patient group that received acupuncture for knee arthritis, as well as a “control” group. In some studies, control patients were placed on a waiting list for acupuncture, while in others they received some standard therapy that acupuncture patients did not. Control patients in other studies received sham acupuncture.
In general, the Manheimer’s team found, only studies that pitted acupuncture against doing nothing, or against standard care, showed clear benefits. The results of the sham-controlled trials were too mixed to show any benefits, according to the researchers.
The investigators do not, however, dismiss the potential benefits of acupuncture for knee arthritis. Indeed, they note, a possible explanation for the mixed results is that sham acupuncture had some actual biological effects.
Given the overall safety of acupuncture, the researchers conclude, patients can still consider it as one option in a “multidisciplinary approach” to treating knee arthritis.
[Annals of Internal Medicine, June 19, 2007]
acupuncture
Acupuncture stimulates brain metabolism in dementia patients
CM NEWS - Needling specific acupoints may help patients with dementia, a recently published study shows. The acupoint combo seems to increase cerebral glucose metabolism in the brain, as indicated by cerebral functional imaging. Read more
Acupuncture helps mothers breast feed
CM NEWS - So now not only acupuncture can control pain, it can also help a mother to have a smooth breast feeding experience.
A group of Swedish scientiests set out to compare acupuncture treatment and care interventions for the relief of inflammatory symptoms of the breast during lactation, and to investigate the relationship between bacteria in the breast milk and clinical signs and symptoms in a randomised, non-blinded, controlled study.
The researchers are from Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Helsingborg Hospital and Faculty of Social and Life Sciences, Karlstad University in Swede.
205 mothers with 210 cases of inflammatory symptoms of the breast during lactation agreed to participate. The mothers were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups, two of which included acupuncture among the care interventions and one without acupuncture.
All groups were given essential care. Protocols, which included scales for erythema, breast tension and pain, were maintained for each day of contact with the breast feeding clinic. A Severity Index (SI) for each mother and each day was created by adding together the scores on the erythema, breast tension and pain scales. The range of the SI was 0 (least severe) to 19 (most severe).
Significant differences were found in the mean SI scores on contact days 3 and 4 between the non-acupuncture group and the two acupuncture groups. Mothers with less favourable outcomes (6 contact days, n=61) were, at first contact with the midwife, more often given advice on correction of the baby’s attachment to the breast. An obstetrician was called to examine 20% of the mothers, and antibiotic treatment was prescribed for 15% of the study population. The presence of Group B streptococci in the breast milk was related to less favourable outcomes.
“If acupuncture treatment is acceptable to the mother, this, together with care interventions such as correction of breast feeding position and babies’ attachment to the breast, might be a more expedient and less invasive choice of treatment than the use of oxytocin nasal spray,” the researchers wrote.
However, no significant difference was found in numbers of mothers in the treatment groups, with the lowest possible score for severity of symptoms on contact days 3, 4 or 5. No statistically significant differences were found between the treatment groups for number of contact days needed until the mother felt well enough to discontinue contact with the breast feeding clinic or for number of mothers prescribed antibiotics.
The researchers add that midwives, nurses or medical practitioners with specialist competence in breast feeding should be the primary care providers for mothers with inflammatory symptoms of the breast during lactation. The use of antibiotics for inflammatory symptoms of the breast should be closely monitored in order to help the global community reduce resistance development among bacterial pathogens.
[Journal: Midwifery. 2007 Jun;23(2):184-95. Epub 2006 Oct 18.]
Acupuncture on hypertension ‘a clear effect’: landmark study
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Heartwire - A study billed as the first rigorous, randomized trial in the West to test acupuncture against a sham (fake) needle technique to treat hypertension suggests that, performed properly, acupuncture may produce blood-pressure changes on a par with monotherapy in mild to moderate hypertension.
“It’s certainly not like a wonder drug; it’s not a massive effect, but it’s a clear effect,” lead investigator Dr Frank A Flachskampf (Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Germany) said.
Smaller randomized trials have been performed in China, with mixed results, while one randomized study in the West found no difference in blood-pressure lowering between traditional Chinese acupuncture, standardized acupuncture, and a sham procedure, the authors note. This earlier study did not use ambulatory blood-pressure measurements, believed to be superior to office-based measurements.
Results of their study are published online June 4, 2007 in Circulation.
For the study, 160 outpatients with uncomplicated, mild to moderate hypertension were randomized to six weeks of acupuncture performed by Chinese medicine practitioners, trained in China, or to a sham procedure. In both arms, patients underwent 22 sessions, each 30 minutes in length. By the end of the six weeks, 24-hour ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressures were significantly reduced from baseline in the acupuncture-treated patients (5.4 mm Hg and 3.0 mm Hg, respectively), and this change was also significantly different from values in the sham-treated patients, in whom no meaningful changes were seen.
After three and six months, however, the blood-pressure reductions disappeared, leading investigators to conclude that ongoing acupuncture treatments would be required to maintain the blood-pressure reductions.
“The main finding is that for the first time in a reasonably sized but still relatively small randomized study, this establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that acupuncture lowers blood pressure,” Flachskampf commented. “It’s a modest but undeniable effect on both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.”
The extent of the blood-pressure reductions are comparable to those seen with ACE-inhibitor monotherapy or aggressive lifestyle changes, including radical salt restrictions, he added.
A “demanding” alternative to drugs
Flachskampf had some caveats, acknowledging that the regular acupuncture sessions used in the study represent a significant time investment: each acupuncture session lasted 30 minutes—not including transportation and administrative time—and took place several times a week. The study subjects were also reasonably healthy, with no other major risk factors and with only mild to moderate hypertension.
“This is clearly something that would probably not work as well with very sick people or people with blood pressure at dangerous levels,” he said. “We cannot easily extrapolate to people, for example, with complicated hypertension who have had a myocardial infarction.”
Flachskampf believes, however, that acupuncture likely represents an attractive option in specific patients, particularly those averse to taking medical therapy who are open to so-called “alternative” medicine.
“This is probably only for people who somehow relate to this spiritually, who say I am profoundly against taking drugs and I’m very fond of Oriental wisdom or things like that,” Flachskampf told heartwire. “I don’t want to make a joke about this, but this certainly needs more compliance than taking two or three pills a day. It’s much more demanding.”
Unlike drugs, acupuncture appeared to have few or no side effects, although two people complained that the needles were painful. “Clearly, many millions of Chinese get acupuncture without any major problems so I think this is really a minor point,” Flachskampf observed.
[Circulation 2007; DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.661140. Flachskampf FA, Gallasch J, Gefeller O, et al. "Randomized trial of acupuncture to lower blood pressure." ]
Acupressure brings better breathing to depressive patients
CM NEWS - Acupressure is effective in lessening shortness of breath in patients with depression, which could help remove the psychological pressure of dyspnea of these patients, a Taiwan study shows.
The onset of depression is often triggered by breathlessness in persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is hypothesized that these are the psychologic consequences of chronic dyspnea (shortness of breath). Read more
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