Studies Proving Acupuncture’s Ability to Resolve Osteoarthritis Symptoms

Acupuncture is a Chinese medical practice of sticking filiform needles into specific points in the body to bolster well being and health. It has been practiced for 3,000 years in China and other parts of East Asia. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that more than 2 million American adults underwent acupuncture treatment in 2002. The traditional type of acupuncture has been the most researched acupuncture technique ever and it involves the use of metallic, solid, thin needles stuck into the skin and are manipulated with the hands or with electrical stimulation. Scientific studies in recent years have opened up more light into the potential benefits and possible mechanisms of acupuncture especially if they’re used for the treatment of painful illnesses like arthritis.

Improving function and providing alleviation of pain, acupuncture is ideal for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis and can be an effective adjunct to conventional treatment. A controlled phase III randomized study that was sponsored by the NIAMS (National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases) and NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine), two of the many branches of the NIH (National Institutes of Health), tested the effectiveness of acupuncture for the treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee in Miami.

Around 570 patients with ages 50 years and above were used in this study. All of them were suffering from osteoarthritis of the knee. All patients were also experiencing osteoarthritis for at least a month prior to the beginning of the study. All of them neither had acupuncture treatment before nor had knee surgery in the previous 6 months. They also were not given any steroid injection. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of three therapies: sham acupuncture, acupuncture and taking part in a control group that did self-help course for the management of their ailment in accordance with guidelines formulated by the Arthritis Foundation. The subjects were still administered with conventional medical care such as opioid painkillers, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, cox-2 selective inhibitors and other anti-inflammatory drugs.

This is the first time that a test of this magnitude was performed to see if acupuncture can resolve the functional impairment and alleviate the pain caused by of osteoarthritis of the knee. The outcomes showed that acupuncture truly was effective in terms of being an adjunct treatment to a conventional regimen of care which has led to the improvement of the quality of life of knee osteoarthritis sufferers.

In the United States, about 21 million adults suffer from osteoarthritis. This condition is one the most common causes of disability among adults which makes it more important to seek out a effective and alternative way of treatment to improve joint function and banish pain.

In another study done at the University of Maryland School of Medicine at Baltimore, Maryland, a total of 381 patients were given one of two types of acupuncture treatments. The subjects were divided into two groups with one group given true acupuncture while another group received sham acupuncture. All subjects were given a total of 24 treatments over a span of 26 weeks. The subjects treated with sham acupuncture were prevented from being able to know if needles were inserted at the proper acupoints. Each patient in both groups had a screen that prevented them from seeing the area of the knee where the treatment took place. They also had no idea what kind of acupuncture treatment they were receiving. A control group composed of 189 subjects watched total of 6, 2-hour group sessions for 3 months based on a self-help course sponsored by the Arthritis Foundation.

All the patient’s knee function and pain were evaluated after 4, 8, 14, and 26 weeks using standard measurement tools and standard arthritis research survey instruments. At the end of the eight week, the group treated with acupuncture exhibited a substantial improvement in function. At the end of the 14th week, a substantial subsiding of pain in the subjects treated with real acupuncture was noted, much more compared to the control and sham acupuncture groups. On average the group given true acupuncture experienced a 40% markdown of their pain and an almost 40% increase in function compared to baseline evaluations.

These studies prove the fact that acupuncture is a tried and tested adjunct treatment to Western modalities for the of treatment of osteoarthritis.