Sham Acupuncture Works, Again

Last year I reported on the effectiveness of sham acupuncture in relieving the pains of carpal tunnel syndrome and tennis elbow. Now there’s another report of the effectiveness of needles inserted without “traditional” expertise. This time it’s from Germany; the target is chronic low back pain, and the study is reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Over 1000 patients with chronic low back pain for an average of 8 years were allocated at random to one of 3 groups: expert acupuncture, sham acupuncture, or conventional treatment (pain killers, physical therapy, and exercise). The sham treatment, in this case, consisted of superficial needling at non-acupuncture points. After 6 months 47% of the true acupuncture group experienced a response (33% or better improvement in 3 pain scales or 12% improvement on another, more ‘difficult’, scale), compared with 44% of those on the sham acupuncture therapy. The conventional therapy group only had a 27% response – not to be sneezed at, but significantly less than the two needling therapies.

So this study, like the one on carpal tunnel and tennis elbow pain, shows that sham acupuncture works just as well as the real thing. The authors say the lack of difference between acupuncture groups "forces us to question the underlying action mechanism of acupuncture and to ask whether the emphasis placed on ... traditional Chinese acupuncture points may be superfluous." That’s fighting words, in view of the large and growing number of acupuncture schools in the USA.

P.S.  A new report from the European Cancer Organization meeting compares ‘real’ and ‘sham’ acupuncture used to suppress nausea in patients having radiotherapy for cancer.  There were no differences betwenthe ‘real’ and ‘sham’ effects;  93% and 96% of the ‘real’ and ‘sham’ acupuncture patients believed the procedure had moderate to much effectiveness.  Unfortunately, the study did not have a comparative group, such as anti-nausea drug administration.  But the result (real = sham acupuncture) is similar to that for low back pain.