Research
Acupuncture shown to work on brain in pain relief says BBC2 programme. 24.01.2006
BBC2's programme "Alternative Health" showed researchers carrying out brain scans on people having acupuncture.
The BBC Two show also featured heart surgery done using acupuncture instead of a general anesthetic.
The patient is conscious during the operation in China, but she was given sedatives and a local anesthetic.
In Alternative Medicine: The Evidence, volunteers were subjected to deep needling, which involves needles being inserted 1cm into the back of the hand at well-known acupuncture points.
A control group underwent superficial needling with needles placed only 1mm in.
The needles are then twiddled until the participants feel a dull, achy or tingling sensation. For those in the deep needling group this stimulates the nervous system.
During these two procedures, the volunteers underwent brain scans to see what, if any, effect there was in the brain.
The team, including leading scientists from University College London, Southampton University and the University of York, found the superficial needling resulted in activation of the motor areas of the cortex, a normal reaction to pain.
But with deep needling, the limbic system, part of the pain matrix, is deactivated.
The finding was surprising because experts had always assumed acupuncture activates the brain in some way.
Professor Kathy Sykes said: "The pain matrix is involved in the perception of pain - it helps someone decide whether something is painful or not, so it could be that acupuncture in some ways changes a person's pain perception.
"We have found something quite unexpected - that acupuncture is having a measurable effect on the human brain.
"We are not suggesting that it should be used during surgery, although it is in China, but just that it acts as a pain relief and should be taken seriously."
Relief for Tinnitus 28.10.2005
Acupuncture could offer relief for tinnitus, a ringing in the ears which affects millions in the UK. New research at York University shows that 5 out of the 6 patients in a study improved after two weeks of treatment. The six patients were aged 32 to 79 and had suffered for between one and 20 years with the complaint, for which there is no cure. The group was given 10 acupuncture treatments over a 2 week period. The needle sites and number of points used varied between patients. After 2 weeks nearly all patients reported a drop in loudness and pitch and fewer hours affected by tinnitus. Only one patient, the eldest, felt worse. The quality of sleep also improved in the majority of patients.
'More work is needed, but our results support the idea that acupuncture might be beneficial for people with tinnitus,' says Dr Hugh MacPherson, a senior research fellow at York University.
(Jackson A, MacPherson H, Hahn S. "Acupuncture for tinnitus: a series of six n=1 trials." (In Press Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2005.))
Acupuncture: an effective treatment for tension headaches 29.07.2005
Acupuncture is an effective treatment for tension headaches, say German researchers from the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research at Technische Universitat in Munich
The ancient Chinese therapy cut the rates of headaches by nearly half in a study of 270 people.
"A significant proportion of patients with tension-type headaches benefited from acupuncture" said Dr Wolfgang Weidenhammer, one of the research team. Patients were given 12 sessions of acupuncture over 8 weeks. The headache rate in patients given the traditional treatment dropped by almost half. They experienced 7 fewer days of headaches in the four weeks after treatment had finished.
The results of the research, published in the British Medical Journal (29 July 2005) stated that "acupuncture was well tolerated and improvements lasted several months after completion of treatment"
Acupuncture proven to go beyond placebo effect 02.05.2005
Brain scanning techniques were used to demonstrate acupuncture's impact is more than just a placebo by researchers at the University of Southampton and UCL.
The results showed that real acupuncture elicits a demonstrable physiological response in the brain distinctly different from that occurring when the patient has an expectation or belief in the treatment.
The researchers used a very sophisticated form of brain scanning called Positron Emisson Tomgoraphy (PET) to find out what took place in patients' brains when they had acupuncture.
The patients, all suffering from painful osteo-arthritis, were divided into three groups:
* One group were touched with blunt needles, with the participants being aware that this had no therapeutic value and that the needles would not pierce the skin. The parts of their brain linked to the sensation of touch were activated.
* The second group were treated with special needles which only 'appeared' to pierce the skin. These needles functioned like 'stage daggers' with the tip of the needle retracting up into the handle on 'insertion'. This group of patients believed that the treatment was real and the brain scans showed that an area of the brain associated with pain relief was activated. This part of the brain is linked to the production of natural pain killers (opiates).
* The third group of patients received 'real' acupuncture. The area associated with opiate generation was activated but in addition, the ipsilateral insular cortex was also activated. This is a part of the brain thought to be involved with pain modulation and is a pathway associated with acupuncture.
The British Acupuncture Council comments "This is very positive news for acupuncture and this latest research is an exciting illustration of what acupuncturists have known for a long time - that acupuncture works and its effectiveness goes beyond the placebo effect. The British Acupuncture Council looks forward to further research into acupuncture and the treatment protocols carried out by our members. "
The British Acupuncture Council welcomes research to demonstrate the value of acupuncture when the studies are properly designed and executed.
(About the research: the paper 'Expectancy and belief modulate the neuronal substrates of pain treated by acupuncture' appears in the Vol 25 Issue 4 of NeuroImage published on 1 May 2005 (pp 1161 - 1167). The authors are Jérémie Pariente, Peter White, Richard S.J. Frackowiak, and George Lewith.)
Acupuncture lowers blood pressure 31.03.2005
U.S. researchers at the University of California have found that acupuncture treatment lowers raised blood pressure in rats by as much as 50%.
The researchers inserted needles into specific points on the forelimbs of rats with artificially elevated blood pressure and applied a small, low frequency electrical current. The blood pressure of the rats decreased by between 40 and 50%.
They are now testing to see whether the technique will have the same effect in humans with high blood pressure.
Acupuncture can relieve pain for mothers-to-be 18.03.2005
A research team from Gothenburg, Sweden, has found that acupuncture is effective at relieving pelvic pain during pregnancy. Pelvic girdle pain is common among pregnant women with one in three affected suffering severe pain.
The team studied the effect of three six-week treatment programmes on 386 pregnant women suffering from pelvic girdle pain. One group were given a standard home exercise routine, a second received the exercise routine and acupuncture, while the third had a specialised exercise regime aimed at improving mobility and strength. Pain levels were recorded every morning and evening and assessments were done by an independent examiner. The women using acupuncture experienced the best results, followed by those who underwent the specialised exercise programme.
Dr Graham Archard, vice-chair of the Royal College of GPs, said
"The use of acupuncture to treat pain during pregnancy certainly seems credible."
Acupuncture relieves depression during pregnancy 03.03.2005
A recent clinical trial from Stanford University in the U.S. has found that 70% of women studied responded positively to treatment with acupuncture for depression during pregnancy.
Sixty-one pregnant women with major depressive disorder were studied in this double blinded controlled trial, with the researchers concluding that "acupuncture holds promise for the treatment of depression during pregnancy"
Acupuncture Aids Pain Relief for Knee Arthritis 21.11.2004
Acupuncture, used as a complementary therapy to drugs, is a more effective treatment for knee osteo-arthritis than medication alone, says a Spanish study in the latest British Medical Journal.
The research team treated 88 knee osteo-arthritis patients with diclofenac - a standard anti-inflammatory painkiller. Half the patients received 12 weekly acupuncture treatments as well, selecting acupuncture points on the basis of traditional treatment methods, while the other half had sham acupuncture that did not penetrate their skin.
At the end of treatment, it was found that those who received real acupuncture had taken less of their pain medication than those who had fake acupuncture. Yet they had less pain, less stiffness, and better physical function.
Acupuncture Helps to Relieve Allergies in Children 16.11.2004
According to a new study in the journal Paediatrics, acupuncture can help relieve hay fever and other nasal allergies in children. Researchers at a hospital in Hong Kong studied 85 children with allergies. Half were given acupuncture according to traditional Chinese medical principles; the other half were given a sham acupuncture treatment. The children who had received genuine acupuncture reported significantly fewer sneezing bouts and less congestion over the following months, compared with the placebo group, who saw no improvement.
Acupuncture can improve chances of successful fertility treatment 02.11.2004
According to recent research in the USA, acupuncture can significantly improve a woman's chances of successful fertility treatment. Patients receiving acupuncture during IVF had higher rates of pregnancy and lower rates of miscarriage. Researchers from the Reproductive Medicine and Fertility Centre in Colorado Springs studied 114 women undergoing IVF.
Only 36 per cent of the women on conventional treatment became pregnant, compared with 51 per cent of those who had acupuncture. Just 8 per cent of the acupuncture patients suffered a miscarriage, compared to 20 per cent of the other patients. The therapy also reduced the risk of ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo develops in the fallopian tube rather than the womb. Live birth rates in the acupuncture women were 23 per cent higher for each IVF cycle.
