Acupuncture 'cuts arthritis pain'

By Nigel Hawkes

ACUPUNCTURE can ease the pain and disability caused by arthritis, a study in Germany has indicated.

Previous trials have shown that acupuncture can relieve pain, but many have been small and it is difficult to decide whether the benefits identified are simply the result of the placebo effect.

The German study, published in Arthritis & Rheumatism, compared the experience of 357 patients given immediate acupuncture with a further 355 whose treatment started three months later.

Benefits were measured on the WOMAC scale, a widely used scale of disease severity which measures pain, stiffness, and how well the joint works. At the start of treatment the patients’ scores on the scale were about 50.

After 15 sessions in the first three months, the patients treated with acupuncture had WOMAC scores of about 30, while the control group still waiting for treatment remained about 50.

After adjusting for other factors, the improvement in the score was 36 per cent. After six months the control group, which began its treatment three months later, showed the same level of improvement. In all cases normal care continued alongside the acupuncture treatments.

The researchers, led by Claudia Witte, of the Charité University of Medicine in Berlin, concluded that adding acupuncture to the normal treatment regimes — which generally consists of anti-inflammatory drugs — produced “a clinically relevant and persistent benefit”.

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Hypnosis and Acupuncture Show Promise for Labor Pain

By Taunya English, Science Writer
Health Behavior News Service

A review of non-drug pain relief therapies suggests that hypnosis and acupuncture may ease labor pain.

“There is too little research to assess how effective many complementary therapies will be with pain management in labor,” said lead study author Caroline Smith. Further research is needed, she said, but “the results concerning acupuncture and hypnosis are encouraging.”

In addition to hypnosis and acupuncture, the review examined the effects of massage, relaxation, aromatherapy, acupressure and white noise on pain relief. But the review did not turn up enough evidence to determine if any of the other therapies bring women significant comfort.

The meta-analysis compiles data from 14 studies that included more than 1,400 women. Five studies examined hypnosis, while three studies gauged acupuncture’s effect on pain relief.

“More robust research and more research trials have been undertaken for these two therapies versus the other treatments,” said Smith, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing trials on a topic.

Hypnosis reduces the need for drug pain relief in labor, lessens the need for medications that augment labor and increases the number of spontaneous vaginal births, according to the available data. The women treated with acupuncture reported more satisfaction with their labour pain management versus the mothers who did not receive that treatment, the review found.

Before these findings can be confidently put into practice, Smith said, she’d like to see better-designed trials on hypnosis and acupuncture.

Other gauges of the effectiveness of the labor pain-relief therapies included clinical outcomes like the length of labor, the need to use instruments to assist labor and trauma to the perineum.

Seattle-area doula and childbirth educator Penny Simkin — who was not involved in the Cochrane review — said “many of my students choose to use acupuncture, but mostly it’s the ones who give birth outside the hospital.”

Women who give birth at home or in a community birth center are more likely to use acupuncture, Simkin said, because acupuncture practitioners rarely have treating privileges at hospitals. That limited access is a barrier to treatment that has worked well for pain management, Simkin said.

“This Cochrane review might lower that barrier a little bit,” said Simkin, a faculty member at the Seattle Midwifery School.

A doula provides informational, emotional and physical comfort to women during labor and birth, while a healthcare professional attends to the medical needs of the laboring mother and child. Simkin said a large part of her job is helping women with pain management so they don’t become overwhelmed or panicked.

“When we talk about pain relief, acupuncture can induce a very impressive sense of relaxation,” she said. “So I think that it does have a place and I think that it is gaining in respect in leaps and bounds in this country,”

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Chinese acupuncture can cure 461 diseases, expert reports

Tianjin, Oct. 14 (Xinhua): Chinese acupuncture can cure 461 diseases, said an expert with Chinese Acupuncture Clinic Research Center in north China's Tianjin city.
Du Yuanhao, 43-year-old doctor, gave the conclusion after four-year's study on the acupuncture functions together with his team.
According to Du's findings, most of the diseases to which acupuncture is effective are in the nervous system, the digestive system, the genitourinary system, muscles, bones and skins, such as stroke, diarrhea, enteritis, dementia and skin rashes.
The points for acupuncture are in flesh, and that is why the treatment can be effective to diseases in muscles and skins, Du said. "Besides, points are rich in nerves. Thus it can also cure diseases in the nervous system and other systems whose functions are directly controlled by nerves."
Although acupuncture is convenient and with less side effects compared with other forms of medical treatment, it couldn't cure every disease. As for these 461 diseases, Du noted, its effects are different.
The professor is now working at classification for the 461 diseases. "I am going to categorize them into three levels -- those could be cured solely by acupuncture, those to which acupuncture is the major treatment and those with acupuncture as assisting treatment. Acupuncture is part of traditional Chinese medicine with a history of over 2,000 years. It involves insertion of fine metallic needles on the body to relieve pain and cure diseases.