An international research collaboration, involving the
University of Southampton, has shown that acupuncture is an effective treatment
for chronic pain in patients with chronic back and neck pain, osteoarthritis,
shoulder pain, and chronic headache.
Professor George Lewith from the University of Southampton,
together with investigators at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in
Boston and researchers from the Universities of Keele and York, have analysed
raw individual patient data – an approach that allows for more statistically
precise results – for 17,922 participants enrolled in 29 high quality,
randomized trials, which took place over a number of years, that measured how
well acupuncture relieved chronic pain associated with these four pain
conditions.