acupuncture
As if to celebrate the end of ‘Acupuncture Awareness Week’, I am off today to give a few lectures in Oslo. One title is most fitting: ACUPUNCTURE: FACTS AND FALLACIES. Here are some of the fallacies I intend to discuss:
- Appeal to popularity
- Appeal to tradition
- Science can explain how it works
- Acupuncture is a ‘cure-all’
- It worked for me, my aunt, etc.
- Acupuncture even works for animals
- Even if it’s just a placebo, it helps patients.
- It defies scientific testing.
- Acupuncture research is productive
- Acupuncture is by definition rubbish
- Acupuncture is risk-free
- Its benefits outweigh its risks
None of these themes need much by way of explanation for the readers of this blog, I think.
So, why do I mention them at all?
The answer is simple: I was hoping to get a few inspirations and tips from you for further subjects that I might include.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE MAIN FALLACIES IN THE REALM OF ACUPUNCTURE?
The current ‘Acupuncture Awareness Week’ is perhaps a good occasion to look beyond acupuncture for humans. The ‘Chi Institute’ is an organisation that teaches TCM for animals. There you can specialise in all sorts of intriguing things that a critical mind would have never thought about. Take acupuncture for horses, for instance; on their website, the Institute informs us that:
The Equine Acupuncture Program…certifies students in veterinary acupuncture with an emphasis on horses. The program begins with an overview of fundamental aspects of Chinese Medicine, including Ying-Yang and Five Elements theory, which serve as a foundation for case diagnosis and treatment presented later in the class. A variety of acupuncture techniques are taught, including electro-acupuncture and moxibustion, in addition to conventional “dry” needling. Students of the program learn acupuncture points on large animals only, and horses are used for practice in the wet labs.
The program is presented in five sessions (two online and three on-site) over a period of six months. Online sessions are composed of lectures that students can stream at their own convenience. Afternoon wet-labs of on-site sessions give students the opportunity to learn acupuncture points on live animals in small lab groups of five to six students per instructor. A spring class and a fall class are held each year. Equine Acupuncture is offered to licensed veterinarians and veterinary school junior/senior students only.
Major Topics:
- Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM) Principles: Five Elements, Yin-Yang, Eight Principles, Zang-Fu Physiology and Pathology, Meridians and Channels
- Scientific Basis of Acupuncture
- 200 Transpositional Equine Acupuncture Points (hands-on, wet-lab demos)
- 70 Classical Equine Acupuncture Points (hands-on, wet-lab demos)
- How to needle acupuncture points in horses
- TCVM Diagnostic Systems, including Tongue and Pulse Diagnosis
- How to integrate acupuncture into your practice
- How to use veterinary acupuncture to diagnose and treat:
- Musculoskeletal conditions, lameness and neurological disorders
- Cardiovascular diseases and respiratory disorders
- Gastrointestinal disorders and behavioral problems
- Dermatological problems and immune-mediated diseases
- Renal & urinary disorders and reproductive disorders
- Veterinary acupuncture techniques:
- Dry needle (conventional needling)
- Aqua-acupuncture (point injection)
- Electro-acupuncture
- Hemo-acupuncture
- Moxibustion
But is there not something missing, I asked myself when I read this. What about the evidence? What about the question whether there is any proof that any of this works?
As it happens, some time ago, we looked into this by conducting a systematic review. Here is our abstract ( I should mention that the first author of this paper was a vet who was very fond of acupuncture):
Acupuncture is a popular complementary treatment option in human medicine. Increasingly, owners also seek acupuncture for their animals. The aim of the systematic review reported here was to summarize and assess the clinical evidence for or against the effectiveness of acupuncture in veterinary medicine. Systematic searches were conducted on Medline, Embase, Amed, Cinahl, Japana Centra Revuo Medicina and Chikusan Bunken Kensaku. Hand-searches included conference proceedings, bibliographies, and contact with experts and veterinary acupuncture associations. There were no restrictions regarding the language of publication. All controlled clinical trials testing acupuncture in any condition of domestic animals were included. Studies using laboratory animals were excluded. Titles and abstracts of identified articles were read, and hard copies were obtained. Inclusion and exclusion of studies, data extraction, and validation were performed independently by two reviewers. Methodologic quality was evaluated by means of the Jadad score. Fourteen randomized controlled trials and 17 nonrandomized controlled trials met our criteria and were, therefore, included. The methodologic quality of these trials was variable but, on average, was low. For cutaneous pain and diarrhea, encouraging evidence exists that warrants further investigation in rigorous trials. Single studies reported some positive intergroup differences for spinal cord injury, Cushing’s syndrome, lung function, hepatitis, and rumen acidosis. These trials require independent replication. On the basis of the findings of this systematic review, there is no compelling evidence to recommend or reject acupuncture for any condition in domestic animals. Some encouraging data do exist that warrant further investigation in independent rigorous trials.
What a pity that the pupils of the above course are not being told that THERE IS NO COMPELLING EVIDENCE that any of the tings they are about to learn has any value…but that would be bad for business, wouldn’t it? And we cannot have a bit of evidence jeopardize a nice little earner, can we?
Yes, we discussed this study on a previous blog post. But, as it is ‘ACUPUNCTURE AWARENESS WEEK’ in the UK, and because of another reason (which will become clear in a minute) I decided to revisit the trial.
In case you have forgotten, here is its abstract once again:
Background: Hot flashes (HFs) affect up to 75% of menopausal women and pose a considerable health and financial burden. Evidence of acupuncture efficacy as an HF treatment is conflicting.
Objective: To assess the efficacy of Chinese medicine acupuncture against sham acupuncture for menopausal HFs.
Design: Stratified, blind (participants, outcome assessors, and investigators, but not treating acupuncturists), parallel, randomized, sham-controlled trial with equal allocation. (Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12611000393954)
Setting: Community in Australia.
Participants: Women older than 40 years in the late menopausal transition or postmenopause with at least 7 moderate HFs daily, meeting criteria for Chinese medicine diagnosis of kidney yin deficiency.
Interventions: 10 treatments over 8 weeks of either standardized Chinese medicine needle acupuncture designed to treat kidney yin deficiency or noninsertive sham acupuncture.
Measurements: The primary outcome was HF score at the end of treatment. Secondary outcomes included quality of life, anxiety, depression, and adverse events. Participants were assessed at 4 weeks, the end of treatment, and then 3 and 6 months after the end of treatment. Intention-to-treat analysis was conducted with linear mixed-effects models.
Results: 327 women were randomly assigned to acupuncture (n = 163) or sham acupuncture (n = 164). At the end of treatment, 16% of participants in the acupuncture group and 13% in the sham group were lost to follow-up. Mean HF scores at the end of treatment were 15.36 in the acupuncture group and 15.04 in the sham group (mean difference, 0.33 [95% CI, −1.87 to 2.52]; P = 0.77). No serious adverse events were reported.
Limitation: Participants were predominantly Caucasian and did not have breast cancer or surgical menopause.
Conclusion: Chinese medicine acupuncture was not superior to noninsertive sham acupuncture for women with moderately severe menopausal HFs.
When I first discussed this trial, I commented that the trial has several strengths: it includes a large sample size and the patients were adequately blinded to eliminate the effects of expectations. It was published in a top journal, and we can therefore assume that it was properly peer-reviewed. Combined with the evidence from our previous systematic review, this indicates that acupuncture has no effect beyond placebo.
The reason for bringing it up again is that a comment about the study has recently appeared, not just any old comment but one from the British Medical Acupuncture Society. It is, in my view, gratifying and interesting. It was published on ‘facebook’ and is therefore in danger of getting forgotten. I hope to preserve it by citing it in full.
Here it is:
A large rigorous trial published in a prestigious general medical journal, and the usual mantra rings out – acupuncture is no better than sham. In this case there was not a fraction of difference from a non-penetrating sham in a two-armed trial with over 300 women. Ok,…so we have known for some time that we really need 400 in each arm to demonstrate the usual difference over sham seen in meta-analysis in pain conditions, but there really was not even a sniff of a difference here. So is that it for acupuncture in hot flushes? Well, we have a 40% symptom reduction in both groups, and a strong conviction from some practitioners that it really seems to work. Is 40% enough for a strong conviction? I have heard some dramatic stories from medical acupuncturist colleagues that really would be hard to dismiss as non-specific effects, and from others I have heard relative ambivalence about the effects in hot flushes.
Personally I always try to consider mechanisms, and I wish researchers in the field would do the same before embarking on their trials. That is not intended as a criticism of this trial, but some consideration of mechanisms might allow us to explain all our data, including the contribution of this trial.
Acupuncture has recognised effects that are local to the needle, in the spinal cord (mainly in the segments stimulated) and in the brain (as well as humoral effects in CSF and blood). The latter are probably the mildest of the three categories, and require the best group of patient responders for them to be observable in clinical practice.
Menopausal hot flushes are explained by the effects of reduced oestrogens on the thermoregulatory centre in the anterior hypothalamus. It is certainly plausible that the neuro-inhibitory effects of endogenous opioids such as beta-endorphin, which we know can be released by acupuncture stimulation in experimental settings, could stablise neurones in the anterior hypothalamus that have become irritable due to a sudden drop in oestrogens.
So are endogenous opioids always released by acupuncture? Well, they and their effects seem to be measurable in experiments that use what I call proper acupuncture. That is, strong stimulation to deep somatic tissue. In the laboratory, and indeed in my clinic, this is only usually achieved in a palatable manner by electroacupuncture to muscle, although repeated manual stimulation every few minutes may have similar effects.
Ee et al used a relatively gentle acupuncture protocol, so they may have only generated measurable effects, based on mechanistic speculation, in the most responsive patients, perhaps less than 10%.
What does all this tell us? Well this trial clearly demonstrates that gentle acupuncture protocols generate effects in women with hot flushes via context rather than penetrating needling. In conditions that rely on central effects, I think we still need to consider stronger stimulation protocols and enriched enrollment in trials, ie preselecting responders before randomisation.
In my original comment I also predicted: “One does not need to be a clairvoyant to predict that acupuncturists will now find what they perceive as a flaw in the new study and claim that its results were false-negative.”
I am so glad Mike Cummings and the BMAS rushed to prove me right.
It’s so nice to know one can rely on someone in these uncertain times!
As it is ‘ACUPUNCTURE AWARENESS WEEK’, I thought I make a constructive contribution to this field by assessing what is currently being published on the subject. For this purpose, I looked at the first 100 Medline-listed articles of 2016. This has the advantage, of course, that all the numbers thus generated can be seen as absolute and as percentage figures at the same time. I categorised the articles according to where they were published and what their subject was.
My results show that, of the first 100 articles,
- 33 were published in CAM journals,
- 67 were published in mainstream medical journals,
- 6 were RCTs,
- 6 were other clinical studies,
- 30 were pre-clinical investigations,
- 27 were systematic reviews,
- 8 were surveys,
- 23 were other types of papers.
I have to admit, these results are not as bad as I had feared. What seems impressive is foremost the notion that acupuncture research has entered the mainstream journals. But there are issues that might be of concern; in my view these results suggest that:
- Too little research is focussed on the two big questions: efficacy and safety.
- In relation to the meagre output in RCTs, there are too many systematic reviews.
- As long as we cannot be sure that acupuncture is more than a placebo, all these pre-clinical studies seem a bit out of place.
- The vast majority of the articles were in low or very low impact journals.
- There was only one paper that I would consider outstanding (my next post will discuss it).
So, what conclusions can one draw from these data?
Not many, I fear.
My little exploration does not lend itself to grand, generalizable or far-reaching conclusions. Acupuncture fans might proudly say: LOOK HOW FAR WE HAVE COME! Less enthusiastic experts, however, might think: LOOK HOW FAR YOU HAVE TO GO!
It’s acupuncture awareness week in the UK, and therefore, I will focus on this treatment for a few days.
Yesterday, the ‘HALE CLINIC’, London happened to be in the papers for making unsubstantiated claims. It seems to be THE place where the super-rich take their money when they feel a little off colour.
This institution has for many years been a great promoter of acupuncture. On their website, which seems to have changed significantly since the press report about bogus claims made there, they even advertise acupuncture for children and little babies:
Acupuncture has been a normal part of the healthcare system in China for thousands of years, ever since ancient times, being used on babies and children as well as adults. Paediatric acupuncture is a specialist branch of traditional acupuncture, fundamentally the traditional theory is no different, the difference comes with how we assess the children and the way we use the needles. A child’s vital energy or Qi is abundant and much easier to access as it is young. This often means results can be very dramatic and sustained in a positive way, enabling the child to grow into adulthood without conditions that may have stayed throughout their lives.
Acupuncture involves using very short, fine sterile needles which are inserted using a very gentle needle technique specifically for babies. The needles do not stay in so the consultation is relatively quick and the child feels very little. Moxa is often used which is a herb called mugwart that has been rolled into a cigar shape. This is lit and then it smoulders producing a gentle heat which is held over the skin of the child creating a delightful warming sensation. This therapy is very popular with the children as it is very relaxing.
Acupuncture is an extremely effective therapy for babies and children and they are very receptive to it. Once their initial natural anxieties have been overcome, children often find the whole experience enjoyable and look forward to coming for their appointments.
In the interest of promoting awareness of the truth about acupuncture, I think, one ought to point out a few things here:
- The history of acupuncture was not at all as simple as implied above. Acupuncture was even banned in China. Mao re-introduced it, not because he thought it was effective but because he needed to offer some sort of healthcare to the masses.
- The concept of vital energy is a pre-scientific myth which has no basis in reality.
- To claim that children can grow into adulthood without conditions that may have stayed throughout their lives, implies that acupuncture effectively prevents certain diseases. I am not aware of any good evidence for this claim and would therefore classify it as bogus.
- The claim that acupuncture is an extremely effective therapy for babies and children is not supported by good evidence.
What does that tell us about the honesty of the claims made for acupuncture?
You are not surprised?
Considering that the HALE CLINIC now had many hours to ‘clean up’ their website after the allegations in the press, I have to admit that I am a little shocked. They seem to make unsubstantiated claims in order to take parents’ money for sticking useless and potentially harmful needles into their tiny infants.
I am shocked that such misleading information seems to be deemed to be inoffensive.
I am shocked to think that some parents might be sufficiently gullible to do this sort of thing to their infants.
And I am shocked that some people seem to earn their living doing such things.
In 2009, we published a systematic review of studies testing acupuncture as a treatment of menopausal hot flushes. We searched the literature using 17 databases from inception to October 10, 2008, without language restrictions. We only included randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of acupuncture versus sham acupuncture. Their methodological quality was assessed using the modified Jadad score. In total, six RCTs could be included. Four RCTs compared the effects of acupuncture with penetrating sham acupuncture on non-acupuncture points. All of these trials failed to show specific effects on menopausal hot flush frequency, severity or index. One RCT found no effects of acupuncture on hot flush frequency and severity compared with penetrating sham acupuncture on acupuncture points that are not relevant for the treatment of hot flushes. The remaining RCT tested acupuncture against non-penetrating acupuncture on non-acupuncture points. Its results suggested favourable effects of acupuncture on menopausal hot flush severity. However, this study was too small to generate reliable findings. At the time, we concluded that sham-controlled RCTs fail to show specific effects of acupuncture for control of menopausal hot flushes. We also argued that more rigorous research is warranted.
It seems that such research has just become available.
The aim of a brand-new study – a stratified, blind (participants, outcome assessors, and investigators, but not treating acupuncturists were blinded to treatment allocation), parallel, randomized, sham-controlled trial with equal allocation – was to assess the efficacy of Chinese medicine acupuncture against sham acupuncture for menopausal hot flushes (HFs). It was funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.
Women older than 40 years were recruited; they had to be in the late menopausal transition or postmenopause with at least 7 moderate HFs daily, meeting criteria for Chinese medicine diagnosis of kidney yin deficiency. These patients received 10 treatments over 8 weeks of either standardized Chinese medicine needle acupuncture designed to treat ‘kidney yin deficiency’ or they got the same amount of non-insertive sham acupuncture. The primary outcome was HF score at the end of treatment. Secondary outcomes included quality of life, anxiety, depression, and adverse events. Participants were assessed at 4 weeks, the end of treatment, and then 3 and 6 months after the end of treatment. Intention-to-treat analysis was conducted with linear mixed-effects models.
In total, 327 women were randomly assigned to acupuncture (n = 163) or sham acupuncture (n = 164). At the end of treatment, 16% of participants in the acupuncture group and 13% in the sham group were lost to follow-up. Mean HF scores at the end of treatment period were 15.36 in the acupuncture group and 15.04 in the sham group. No serious adverse events were reported.
The authors concluded that Chinese medicine acupuncture was not superior to non-insertive sham acupuncture for women with moderately severe menopausal HFs.
The trial has several strengths: it includes a large sample size and the patients were adequately blinded to eliminate the effects of expectations. It was published in a top journal, and we can therefore assume that it was properly peer-reviewed. Combined with the evidence from our previous systematic review, this indicates that acupuncture has no effect beyond placebo.
In other words: ACUPUNCTURE IS NOTHING BUT A THEATRICAL PLACEBO.
One does not need to be a clairvoyant to predict that acupuncturists will now find what they perceive as a flaw in the new study and claim that its results were false-negative. Subsequently they will probably conduct their own trial which, because it is wide open to bias, will generate the finding they were hoping for.
This sequence of poor quality positive and high quality negative studies could go on ad infinitum.
This begs the question: how can such wasteful pseudo-research be stopped?
In theory, applications to ethics committees for research that is not aimed at answering open and important questions should get rejected. In practice, however, this is unlikely to happen. In my experience, the main reason preventing such actions is that, when it comes to alternative medicine, ethics committees tend to be too lenient (attempting to be ‘politically correct’), too uninterested (thinking that alternative medicine is not really a serious area of research) and too uninformed (failing to insist on a rigorous assessment of the already available evidence).
One of the most common claims of alternative practitioners is that they take a holistic approach to health care. And it is this claim which attracts many consumers. It also makes conventional medicine look bad, reductionist and inhuman, as it implies that mainstream medicine is non-holistic.
The claim can be easily disclosed to be a straw man, because all good medicine was, is and always will be holistic. Moreover, the claim amounts to a falsehood, because much of alternative medicine is everything but holistic. I will try to explain what I mean using the recent example of acupuncture for neck pain, but I could have used almost any other alternative treatment and any other human complaint/condition/disease:
- chiropractic for back pain;
- homeopathy for asthma;
- energy healing for depression;
- aromatherapy for jet lag;
- etc. etc.
The recent trial found that adding acupuncture to usual care yields a slightly better outcome than usual care alone. This is hardly a big deal; adding a good cup of tea and a compassionate chat to usual care might have done a similar thing. Acupuncturists, however, will say that their holistic approach is successful.
How holistic is acupuncture?
A ‘Western’ acupuncturist would normally ask what is wrong with the patient; in the case of neck pain, he would probably ask several further questions about the history of the condition, when the pain occurs, what aggravates it etc. Then he might conduct a physical examination of his patient. Eventually, he would get out his needles and start the treatment.
A ‘traditional’ acupuncturist would ask similar questions, feel the pulse, look at the tongue and make a diagnosis in terms of yin and yang imbalance. Eventually, he too would get out his needles and start the treatment.
Is that holistic?
Certainly not! If we look at alternative practitioners in general, we cannot fail to notice that they tend to be the very opposite of holistic. They usually attribute a patients illness to one single cause such as yin/yang imbalance (acupuncture), subluxation (chiropractic), impediment of the life force (homeopathy), etc.
Holistic means that the patient is understood as a whole person. Our neck pain patient might have physical problems such as muscular tension; the acupuncturists might well have realised this and placed their needles accordingly. But neck pain, like most other symptoms, can have many other dimensions:
- there could be stress;
- there could be an ergonomically disadvantageous work place;
- there could be a history of injury;
- there could be a malformation of the spine;
- there could be a tumour;
- there could be an inflammation;
- there could be many other specific diseases;
- there could be relationship problems, et. etc.
Of course, the acupuncturists will claim that, during an acupuncture session, they will pick up on all of these. However, in my experience, this is little more than wishful thinking. And even if they did pick up other dimensions of the patient’s complaint, what can they do about it? They can (and often do) give rather amateur advice. This may be meant most kindly but it is rarely optimal.
And what about conventional practitioners, aren’t they even worse?
True, there often is far too much room for improvement. But at least the concept of multifactorial conditions and treatments is deeply ingrained in everyone who has been to medical school. We learn that symptoms/complaints/conditions/diseases are almost invariably multifactorial; they have many causes and contributing factors which can interact in complex ways. Therefore, responsible physicians always consider to treat patients in multifactorial ways; in the case of our neck pain patient:
- the stress might need a relaxation programme,
- the work place might need the input of an occupational therapist;
- in case of an old injury, a physio might be needed;
- specific conditions might need to be seen by a range of medical specialists;
- muscular tension could be reduced by a massage therapist;
- relationship problems might require the help of a psychologist; etc. etc.
I am NOT saying that all of this is necessary in each and every case. But I am saying that, in conventional medicine, both the awareness and the possibility for a professional multidisciplinary approach is well established. You don’t believe me? Ask a physiotherapist or an occupational therapist who refers more patients to them, an acupuncturist or a GP!
Alternative practitioners claim to be holistic and some might even be aware of the complexity of their patients’ symptoms. But, at best, they have an amateur approach to this complexity by dabbling themselves in issuing more or less suited advice. They are not adequately trained to do this job, and they refer very rarely.
My conclusion: professional multidiscipinarity is an approach deeply engrained in conventional medicine (we don’t often call it holism, perhaps because many doctors associate this term with charlatans), and it beats the mostly amateurish pseudo-holism of alternative practitioners any time.
The aim of this study was to evaluate clinical effectiveness of Alexander Technique lessons or acupuncture versus usual care for persons with chronic, nonspecific neck pain.
Patients with neck pain lasting at least 3 months, a score of at least 28% on the Northwick Park Questionnaire (NPQ) for neck pain and associated disability, and no serious underlying pathology were randomised to receive 12 acupuncture sessions or 20 one-to-one Alexander lessons (both 600 minutes total) plus usual care versus usual care alone. The NPQ score at 0, 3, 6, and 12 months (primary end point) and Chronic Pain Self-Efficacy Scale score, quality of life, and adverse events (secondary outcomes) served as outcome measures. 517 patients were recruited. Their median duration of neck pain was 6 years. Mean attendance was 10 acupuncture sessions and 14 Alexander lessons. Between-group reductions in NPQ score at 12 months versus usual care were 3.92 percentage points for acupuncture (95% CI, 0.97 to 6.87 percentage points) (P = 0.009) and 3.79 percentage points for Alexander lessons (CI, 0.91 to 6.66 percentage points) (P = 0.010). The 12-month reductions in NPQ score from baseline were 32% for acupuncture and 31% for Alexander lessons. Participant self-efficacy improved for both interventions versus usual care at 6 months (P < 0.001) and was significantly associated (P < 0.001) with 12-month NPQ score reductions (acupuncture, 3.34 percentage points [CI, 2.31 to 4.38 percentage points]; Alexander lessons, 3.33 percentage points [CI, 2.22 to 4.44 percentage points]). No reported serious adverse events were considered probably or definitely related to either intervention.
The authors drew the following conclusions: acupuncture sessions and Alexander Technique lessons both led to significant reductions in neck pain and associated disability compared with usual care at 12 months. Enhanced self-efficacy may partially explain why longer-term benefits were sustained.
Where to begin? There is much to be criticised about this study!
For starters, the conclusions are factually wrong. They should read “acupuncture sessions plus usual care and Alexander Technique lessons plus usual care both led to significant reductions in neck pain and associated disability compared with usual care at 12 months. Enhanced self-efficacy may partially explain why longer-term benefits were sustained.
On this blog, we have repeatedly discussed the ‘A+B versus B’ study design and the fact that it cannot provide information about cause and effect because it fails to control for placebo effects and the extra attention, time and empathy (for instance here and here). I suspect that this is the reason why it is so very popular in alternative medicine. It can make ineffective therapies appear to be effective.
Another point is a more clinical concern. Neck pain is not a disease, it is a symptom. In medicine we should, whenever possible, try to treat the cause of the underlying condition and not the symptom. Acupuncture is at best a symptomatic treatment. Usual care is often not very effective because we normally fail to see the cause of neck pain. In my view, alternative treatments should either be tested against placebo or sham interventions or against optimal care.
What is optimal care for nonspecific neck pain? As its causes are often unclear and usually multifactorial, the optimal treatment needs to be multifactorial (one could also call it holistic) as well. The causes often range from poor ergometric conditions at work to muscular tension, stress, psychological problems etc. Thus optimal care would be a team work tailor-made for each patient possibly including physiotherapists, pain specialists, clinical psychologists, orthopaedic surgeons etc.
My points here are:
- neither acupuncture nor Alexander technique take account of this complexity,
- they claim to be holistic but, in fact, this turns out to be merely a good sales-slogan,
- usual care is usually no good,
- if pragmatic trials using the ‘A+B versus B’ design make any sense at all, they should employ not usual care but optimal care for the control group.
In the end, we are left with a study that looks fairly rigorous at first sight, but that really tells us next to nothing (except that dedicating 600 minutes to patients in pain is not without effect). I am truly surprised that a top journal like the Annals of Internal Medicine decided to publish it.
Today the GUARDIAN published an article promoting acupuncture on the NHS. The article is offensively misleading, I think, and therefore deserves a comment. I write these comments with a heavy heart, I should add, because the GUARDIAN is by far my favourite UK daily. In the following, I will cite key passages from the article in question and add my comments in bold.
Every woman needing pain relief while giving birth at University College London hospital (UCLH) is offered acupuncture, with around half of the hospital’s midwives specially trained to give the treatment. UCLH is far from typical in this respect, though: acupuncture is not standard throughout the UK and many health practitioners claim patients are often denied access to it through the NHS because of entrenched scepticism from sections of the medical establishment.
Entrenched scepticism? I would say that it could be perhaps be related to the evidence. The conclusions of the current Cochrane review on acupuncture for labour pain are cautious and do not seem strong enough to issue a general recommendation for general use in childbirth: “acupuncture and acupressure may have a role with reducing pain, increasing satisfaction with pain management and reduced use of pharmacological management. However, there is a need for further research.”
“There are conditions for which acupuncture works and others where it doesn’t. It is not a cure-all, and should be open to scrutiny. But the focus of my work is for acupuncture to become a standard part of midwifery training, and at the same time change perceptions among clinicians about its appropriate use for a whole range of other conditions.”
Open to scrutiny indeed! And if we scrutinise the evidence critically – rather than engaging in uncritical and arguably irresponsible promotion – we find that the evidence is not nearly as convincing as acupuncture fans try to make us believe.
The UK lags behind many other European countries in its support for acupuncture. Just 2,500 medical professionals here are qualified to practice it, compared with 45,000 in Germany. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommends WMA specifically for the treatment of only two conditions – lower back pain (which costs the NHS £1bn a year) and headaches.
Yes, the UK also lags behind Germany in the use of leeches and other quackery. The ‘ad populum’ fallacy is certainly popular in alternative medicine – but surely, it is still a fallacy!
A growing body of healthcare practitioners believe it should be offered routinely for a variety of conditions, including pain in labour, cancer, musculoskeletal conditions and even irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Here we go, belief as a substitute for evidence and fallacies as a replacement of logical arguments. I had thought the GUARDIAN was better than this!
At a time of NHS cuts the use of needles at 8p per unit look attractive. In St Albans, where a group of nurse-led clinics have been using acupuncture since 2008 for patients with knee osteoarthritis, economics have been put under scrutiny. WMA was offered to 114 patients rather than a knee replacement costing £5,000, and 79% accepted. Two years later a third of them had not required a knee transplant, representing an annual saving of £100,000, as estimated by researchers to the St Albans local commissioning group.
This looks a bit like a ‘back of an envelope’ analysis. I would like to see this published in a reputable journal and see it scrutinised by a competent health economist.
So why is acupuncture not being used more widely? The difficulty of proving its efficacy is clearly one of the biggest stumbling blocks. An analysis of 29 studies of almost 18,000 patients found acupuncture effective in treating chronic pain compared with sham acupuncture.
This passage refers to an analysis by Vickers et al. It was severely and repeatedly criticised for being too optimistic and, more importantly, it is not nearly as positive as implied here. Its conclusions are in fact quite cautious: “acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a reasonable referral option. Significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo. However, these differences are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to the therapeutic effects of acupuncture.”
But even treatment proponents question whether a randomised controlled trial – the gold standard of medical research – works, given that faking treatment is nearly impossible.
What do you mean ‘even treatment proponents’? It is only proponents who question these sham needles! The reason: they frequently do not generate the results acupuncture fans had hoped for.
MY CONCLUSIONS
The article is clearly not the GUARDIAN’s finest hour. It lacks even a tinge of critical assessment. This is regrettable, I think, particularly as the truth about acupuncture is not that difficult to transmit to the public:
- Much of the research is of woefully poor quality.
- Its effectiveness is not proven beyond doubt for a single condition.
- Serious adverse effects have been reported.
- Because it requires substantial amounts of therapist time, it also is not cheap.
This study created a media storm when it was first published. Several articles in the lay press seemed to advertise it as though a true breakthrough had been made in the treatment of hypertension. I would not be surprised, if many patients consequently threw their anti-hypertensives over board and queued up at their local acupuncturist.
Good for business, no doubt – but would this be a wise decision?
The aim of this clinical trial was to examine effectiveness of electroacupuncture (EA) for reducing systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressures (DBP) in hypertensive patients. Sixty-five hypertensive patients not receiving medication were assigned randomly to one of two acupuncture intervention. Patients were assessed with 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. They were treated by 4 acupuncturists with 30-minutes of EA at PC 5-6+ST 36-37 or LI 6-7+GB 37-39 (control group) once weekly for 8 weeks. Primary outcomes measuring effectiveness of EA were peak and average SBP and DBP. Secondary outcomes examined underlying mechanisms of acupuncture with plasma norepinephrine, renin, and aldosterone before and after 8 weeks of treatment. Outcomes were obtained by blinded evaluators.
After 8 weeks, 33 patients treated with EA at PC 5-6+ST 36-37 had decreased peak and average SBP and DBP, compared with 32 patients treated with EA at LI 6-7+GB 37-39 control acupoints. Changes in blood pressures significantly differed between the two patient groups. In 14 patients, a long-lasting blood pressure–lowering acupuncture effect was observed for an additional 4 weeks of EA at PC 5-6+ST 36-37. After treatment, the plasma concentration of norepinephrine, which was initially elevated, was decreased by 41%; likewise, renin was decreased by 67% and aldosterone by 22%.
The authors concluded that EA at select acupoints reduces blood pressure. Sympathetic and renin-aldosterone systems were likely related to the long-lasting EA actions.
These results are baffling, to say the least; and they contradict a recent meta-analysis which did not find that acupuncture without antihypertensive medications significantly improves blood pressure in those hypertensive patients.
So, who is right and who is wrong here?
Or shall we just look for alternative explanations of the effects observed in the new study?
There could be dozens of reasons for these findings that are unrelated to the alleged effects of acupuncture. For instance, they could be due to life-style changes suggested to the experimental but not the control group, or they might be caused by some other undisclosed bias or confounding. At the very minimum, we should insist on an independent replication of this trial.
It would be silly, I think, to trust these results and now recommend acupuncture to the millions of hypertensive patients worldwide, particularly as dozens of safe, cheap and very effective treatments for hypertension do already exist.
