MILLIONS of people who endure the discomfort of acupuncture in the belief it
will ease long-term pain are fooling themselves.
That’s the conclusion of a team led by Jeanette Ezzo of the Complementary
Medicine Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore,
who scoured the literature in search of the most rigorous clinical trials of
acupuncture. Having analysed the results from 51 studies, they say there is
little or no evidence that acupuncture is more effective than placebos or
standard treatment (Pain, vol 86, p 217). Their results contradict some
individual studies, which have suggested that acupuncture…
