acupuncture: quo vadis?

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Dtsch Med Wochenschr. 2006 Mar 10;131(10):506-511.Related Articles, Links

 

 

[Acupuncture: quo vadis?]

 

[Article in German]

 

Backer M, Tao I, Dobos GJ.

 

Lehrstuhl fur Naturheilkunde der Afried Krupp von Bohlen und

Halbach-Stiftung an der Universitat Duisburg-Essen, Klinik fur Innere

Medizin V, Knappschaftskrankenhaus, Kliniken Essen Mitte.

 

Summary. On the current discussion about efficacy and " point-specifity " of

the needle therapy To improve the evidence base for acupuncture in pain

treatment the German health insurances initiated the so called " Acupuncture

randomised trials (ART) " and " German Acupuncture Trials " (GERAC) with a

sample size of 300 (ART) and 1000 (GERAC) patients, providing a new

dimension in acupuncture research. These studies have yielded data, which

indicate that acupuncture is effective in the treatment of migraine, tension

type headache, osteoarthritis of the knee and chronic low back pain. For the

two latter indications acupuncture showed an even higher therapeutic

response rate than conventional standard treatment. In migraine acupuncture

showed an effect comparable to pharmacological treatment. The studies

moreover indicate that the relevance of point-specific effects may have been

overestimated concerning some indications. This article discusses the

results of ART and GERAC, based on differentiating the mechanisms of action

in acupuncture therapy. It is shown that the current data neither support

the postulate of a " no-matter-where acupuncture " nor the irrefutability of

the theorems of . Future studies will have to determine more

precisely the mechanism by which the therapeutic effect of acupuncture is

mediated. Furthermore, it will be necessary to find out more clearly in what

diseases the location of needling represents the crucial part of the

treatment and in what diseases rather different factors, like the intensity

of stimulation or the doctor-patient interaction, are more relevant for the

therapeutic effect. Research into acupuncture is still at the beginning. For

this reason it should be avoided to draw premature and untenable conclusions

from the current data.

 

PMID: 16511742 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]