Acupuncture Unlikely To Relieve Chronic Knee Pain

A few hundred years ago, acupuncture originated in China as an ancient art of healing rooted in Taoist tradition. Now, it's used as an alternative form of medicine to treat many forms of chronic pain.

Unfortunately, recent findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association show that acupuncture is unlikely to improve knee pain.

"Among patients older than 50 years with moderate to severe chronic knee pain, neither laser nor needle acupuncture conferred benefit over sham for pain or function," the study authors noted, in a news release. "Our findings do not support acupuncture for these patients."

For the study, researchers examined close to 300 adults with chronic knee pain who received either need acupuncture, laser acupuncture, sham laser acupuncture or no treatment (control group.) In the sham treatment group, a machine was pre-programed to deliver the laser so that neither the patient nor the acupuncturist knew it was a fake treatment.

All participants received a 20-minute session for up to twice a week for three months and filled out questionnaires about their knee pain at the start of the study and then again three months later and then one year later.

Following three months, all participants who received needle, laser and sham acupuncture all experienced similar reductions in pain when walking compared to the control group. However, the pain improvements were gone over a year and the short-term improvements were too small to note any significant improvements.

Though the study sample was small, researchers noted that the findings are similar to other acupuncture studies.