Does Acupuncture Help Osteoarthrits Knee Pain ?

This question was asked by the German social health care insurance organizations (www.gerac.de) to see if they should pay for the cost of acupuncture. Four German universities joined a study to evaluate 1007 patients with knee pain due to osteoarthritis.

The patients were divided into 3 groups. Each group was assigned to receive 10 sessions of the following:
1: Traditional Chinese acupuncture (real acupuncture) in which needles were placed according to protocol.
2: Sham (fake) acupuncture.
3: Doctor visits with out any acupuncture.

After 26 weeks of treatment the patients in both the real and the sham acupuncture groups had greater improvement in the pain level than those who went to the doctor's offices. However, an interesting and unexpected finding was that there was no difference in the level of pain reduction between the sham and the real acupuncture treatments.

So how can these results be explained? Is it that feeling like you're going to get special treatment makes you feel bettter? Is it that patients in the acupuncture groups have more direct and prolonged time with the health care worker? Or is it that inserting needles in the skin helps no matter where they are placed?

The study concluded that patients who received acupuncture (real or sham) had less pain than those who recieved medical management alone. However, the reason remains unclear since there was no difference between real acupuncture and fake acupuncture. It was recommended that the German insurance organizations cover the acupuncture treatments.

For more on effects of acupuncture see Acupuncutre, Will It Work For You. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

References: please see specifc links.
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