A new study appears to show that sticking needles in people is better than conventional therapies for relieving back pain. This has generated a lot of heat from the world’s media, who have been quick to claim that acupuncture is better than those pesky drugs doctors make you take (extended list below). Researchers in Germany found that after 6 months of treatment 47.6% of those with chronic low back pain given genuine acupuncture felt better, compared with 44.2% of those given sham acupuncture, and 27.4% given conventional therapy (abstract).
‘Real’ treatment involved using traditional Chinese acupuncture principles. Sham treatment involved the painful sounding ‘superficial needling’ at ‘non-acupuncture points’. Conventional therapy was a combination of drugs, physical therapy and exercise.
Does this mean acupuncture is ‘better than medicine’? This is dangerous ground for those selling acupuncture, which makes specific claims about the therapeutic benefits of putting needles in certain places. If fake acupuncture works just as well then they’re all going to be out of a job.
There’s an interesting piece how acupuncture does appear to have a measurable effect on the brain on Nature for subscribers.
Headlines
Needles ‘are best for back pain’ (BBC)
Study: Acupuncture Works for Back Pain (AP)
Acupuncture ‘provides twice the pain relief of standard medicine’ (Daily Mail)
Back Pain: Moving the Needles (NY Times)
Acupuncture helps back pain, don’t ask how (Reuters)
Got a backache? Get acupuncture (AFP)
UPDATE
Blogs having a field day:
DC’s Improbable Science says there has been “a real orgy of bad science reporting about this interesting paper” and includes the interesting titbit that the BBC story is now very different to its original version.
Bad Science goes into full on geek mode about the placebo effect. “Back pain is clearly a problem which requires more than simply pharmaceutical pills. The question is whether an elaborate, expensive, gimmicky and theatrical placebo ritual is an effective use of money, or whether other, cheaper, more pragmatic, honest psychosocial interventions might be more appropriate and cost effective.”
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