Alternative medicine

Acupuncture is equally effective with simulated needles

Simulated acupuncture - sometimes referred to as placebo - is just as beneficial as real acupuncture for treating nausea in cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy, according to a study from Karolinska Institutet and Linköping University in Sweden. Patients, who received only standard care including medications for nausea, felt significant more nausea than patients in both the acupuncture groups. "The beneficial effects seem not to come from the traditional acupuncture method, but probably from the patients' positive expectations and the extra care that the treatment entails," reserchers said. The study study, which is published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, included 215 patients from this group, were blindly assigned traditional or simulated acupuncture. The former group (109 patients) had needles inserted into their skin to stimulate certain points, and the latter (106 patients) had blunt telescopic placebo needles merely pressed against the skin. The acupuncture patients were then compared with 62 patients who had only received the standard care regime with medications for nausea and no acupuncture. The results show that the patients who had received genuine or simulated acupuncture felt much less nauseous than those who had received standard care only. Of the patients who had had some form of acupuncture, only 37 felt nausea and seven per cent vomited, compared with 63 per cent and 15 per cent of the standard care group. However, no differences were observed between the two acupuncture groups, despite the fact that the placebo needle was applied to the skin for a total of only two minutes during the entire five-week treatment period.
Read more

 http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=130&a=119689&l=en&newsdep...

Karolinska Institutet