At last the truth about acupuncture: it's as good as drugs for treating pain

A team of scientists from two British universities made the findings after they carried out brain scans on patients while they underwent the 2,500-year-old treatment. The scans showed differences in the brain's response to acupuncture needles when compared with tests using "dummy needles" that did not puncture the skin.
Doctors found that the part of the brain that manages pain and the nervous system responded to acupuncture needles and improved pain relief by as much as 15 per cent.
Dr George Lewith, from the University of Southampton's Complementary Medicine Research Unit, said the improvement might seem modest, "but it's exactly the same size of effect you would get from real Prozac versus a placebo or real painkillers for chronic pain". "The evidence we now have is that acupuncture works very well on pain," he said.
The findings, which will be published today in the scientific journal NeuroImage, have been welcomed by acupuncturists, who have long faced scepticism from scientists that the benefits are derived from the placebo effect. Although some clinical trials have shown an improvement in pain relief, the practice remains controversial. Other trials, for instance, have found little difference between acupuncture treatments and placebos.