Relief of chronic neck and shoulder pain by manual acupuncture to tender points—a sham-controlled randomized trial☆
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
Chronic dull pain and stiffness of the neck and shoulder are very common symptoms. Acupuncture treatment has been used for pain relief for a long time. Several studies have examined the efficacy of acupuncture treatment for such conditions, however, the results are mixed. Positive results were obtained in studies that used nonacupuncture control groups,1., 2., 3., 4. and negative results tended to be reported in those that used sham acupuncture or mock transcutaneous electrical nerve
Patients
Patients were recruited from the students of an acupuncture school in Japan who complained of chronic dull pain and stiffness of the neck and shoulder without any arm symptoms. Thirty-four subjects who gave written informed consent were enrolled and randomly allocated to acupuncture group (AG) or sham group (SG) by use of a computerized randomization program. Ethical approval for this protocol was given by the ethics committee of Meiji School of Oriental Medicine.
Intervention
Five well-trained licensed
RESULTS
Thirty-four subjects (age range 20–63 years) were enrolled. There were 5 male and 12 female (mean age 34.2±10.8 years) in AG, and 5 male and 12 female (mean age 30.8±12.0) in SG. Two subjects in AG and five subjects in SG missed the third treatment as a result of traffic delays due to bad weather. Adverse effects were not the cause of drop out in this study.
DISCUSSION
In the present sham-controlled RCT, there was no overall statistically significant difference between the real and sham acupuncture to the tender points, 9 days after the third treatment. However, real acupuncture produced statistically significant short-term improvements. The assessment of the blinding procedure indicated that the subjects could not discriminate sham from real acupuncture.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the staff of the Meiji School of Oriental Medicine and subjects.
Dr. Kenji Kawakita, Department of Physiology, Meiji University of Oriental Medicine, Hiyoshi-cho, Funai-gun, Kyoto 629-0392, Japan. Tel.: +81 771 72 1289; Fax: +81 771 72 1289; E-mail: [email protected]
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Dr. Kenji Kawakita, Department of Physiology, Meiji University of Oriental Medicine, Hiyoshi-cho, Funai-gun, Kyoto 629-0392, Japan. Tel.: +81 771 72 1289; Fax: +81 771 72 1289; E-mail: [email protected]
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Funding This study was partly supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Japan Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion and the Foundation for training and licenser examination in anma-massage-acupressure, acupuncture, and moxibustion.