Just in time for Pain Prevention Month, an article published in the Archives of Internal Medicine offers vindication for all those who swear by acupuncture for pain relief. Lead author Andrew J. Vickers of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and colleagues wrote: "Although acupuncture is widely used for chronic pain, there remains considerable controversy as to its value. We aimed to determine the effect size of acupuncture for 4 chronic pain conditions: back and neck pain, osteoarthritis, chronic headache, and shoulder pain."
The team concluded that acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is 'therefore a reasonable referral option." "Significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo," they wrote. "However, these differences are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to the therapeutic effects of acupuncture."
