Translational Acupuncture Research

Abstract

It is still a hot argument if acupuncture only has a placebo effect because both positive and negative reports have been published in the past. After reviewing literature from both China and Western countries, we found strong evidence supporting acupuncture as a therapeutic modality, but not as a placebo. A placebo effect requires a person with clear mind to react to the placebo hint, and believe in the hinted result. However, acupuncture works in some clinical conditions in which patients are in a condition without, or with very weak, consciousness such as coma, shock, persistent vegetable state, general anesthesia, delayed wake-up after surgical operation, and so on. Moreover, the healing effect of acupuncture varies significantly among different acupuncture techniques. Acupuncture can also work in infants and animals. Acupuncture and control acupuncture have different influences on physical and chemical conditions of the body. All these observations suggest that acupuncture has a unique and specific healing effect, independent of the placebo effect. In this chapter, we discuss possible reasons leading to the problematic bias that acupuncture is only a placebo. The most important reason is the failure to use appropriate acupuncture groups and correct treatment plans (e.g., low treatment frequency and fewer number of total treatment sessions). The low healing effect seen in acupuncture groups is therefore easily affected by the variations in the healing effect from the control acupuncture group, thus making inconsistent results in clinical acupuncture studies. We recommend that acupuncturists should follow the Chinese style of acupuncture to increase the success rate in acupuncture studies.