Scientific Research on Acupuncture

The scientific evidence for acupuncture is growing at an incredible rate. As stated by the organization Evidence Based Acupuncture (EBA): “Research into acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown exponentially in the past 20 years, increasing at twice the rate of research into conventional biomedicine. Over this period, there have been over 13,000 studies conducted in 60 countries…” And this is not to mention the tens of thousands of studies that were conducted in China before this current era of scientific inquiry.

A wide array of medical conditions have been studied including: pain & inflammation, fertility, depression & mood disorders, post-stroke care, insomnia, and many others. The evidence base is massive, with over 1,000 systematic reviews of acupuncture (meta analyses), pulled from over 13,000 studies. The first summary was published in 2010 by the Australian Department of Veteran Affairs, which was later updated in 2014 by the US Department of Veteran Affairs. Based on all this evidence, Stephen Janz, who was involved in the compilation of all this scientific data states:

It is no longer possible to say that the effectiveness of acupuncture can be attributed to the placebo effect or that it is useful only for musculoskeletal pain.

The EBA reviewed the effectiveness of acupuncture for 122 treatments covering 14 clinical areas. They found some evidence of effect for 117 conditions – meaning 96% of the time acupuncture was at least somewhat effective! As expected, there was stronger evidence for acupuncture’s effectiveness for some conditions than for other conditions. For part of the evaluation, the review method known as a “Network Meta-analysis” was used, which can be applied to have create a head to head analysis to treatment methods.  To make this post more interesting (I’m trying), I have included a few of the “head to head” results from the study below.  It seems like presenting the results in this way more clearly shows how effective acupuncture treatment can be. These results are not only showing that acupuncture was effective, but that acupuncture is more effective than many other treatment methods!

Below is are some highlights of the head to head comparison, including a few examples of how acupuncture compares to other treatments:

• A 2013 network meta-analysis comparing physical treatments for osteoarthritis of the knee found that, when looking at high quality studies, acupuncture had the largest effect compared to usual care out of the conditions evaluated, out-performing exercise, sham acupuncture, and weight-loss.
• A 2015 network meta-analysis comparing treatments in addition to exercise for shoulder impingement syndrome found that acupuncture was the most effective adjunctive treatment out of 17 interventions, outperforming all other adjuncts such as steroid injection, NSAIDs, and ultrasound therapy.
• A 2016 comparison of 20 treatments for sciatica ranked acupuncture as 2nd most effective after the use of biological agents, outperforming manipulation, epidurals, disc surgery, opioids, exercise, and an invasive procedure called radiofrequency denervation, which came in last.
• In 2018, a network-meta-analysis found that acupuncture was more effective than drugs for treating chronic constipation and with the fewest side-effects.

Much of this information in this article was taken from: Acupuncture: An Overview of Scientific Evidence. I would like to express my personal gratitude to the Evidence Based Acupuncture project for sharing this knowledge and furthering the scientific study of acupuncture.