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Acupuncture effective for OA knee pain over short term

Patients treated with acupuncture had similar WOMAC scores to control patients at one-year follow-up.

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Acupuncture may help reduce the pain associated with knee osteoarthritis and improve joint function over the short term, suggest the results of a new randomized study.

Claudia Witt, MD, and colleagues at the Charité University Medical Centre in Berlin as well as at centers in Munich and in Zurich conducted the study. The researchers randomly assigned 300 patients with chronic knee osteoarthritis to one of three groups. The first group included 150 patients treated with acupuncture. The second group included 76 patients who underwent superficial needling at non-acupuncture points (minimal acupuncture). The third group included 74 control patients assigned to a waiting list, according to the study.

Specially trained physicians at 28 outpatient centers administered acupuncture and minimal acupuncture treatments during 12 sessions spaced over eight weeks. Patients completed questionnaires at baseline and at eight weeks, six months and one year follow-up. All patients were allowed to use NSAIDs during the study, with all three groups having similar rates of NSAID use, according to a press release.

Following treatment, the researchers found that acupuncture patients had a significantly better Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis (WOMAC) score compared to patients in the other two groups. At eight weeks' follow-up, acupuncture-treated patients had a mean WOMAC score of 26.9 compared to a score of 35.8 for minimal acupuncture patients (P=.0002) and to a score of 49.6 for control patients (P<.0001), according to the study.

However, the three groups showed no significant differences at one-year follow-up, the authors noted.

“Acupuncture treatment had significant and clinically relevant short-term effects when compared to minimal acupuncture or no acupuncture treatment,” Witt, lead author of the study, said in the press release. “We now need to assess the long-term effects of acupuncture, both in comparison to sham interventions and to standard treatment.”

The study was published in The Lancet.

For more information:

• Witt C, Brinkhaus B, Jena S, et al. Acupuncture in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee: a randomised trial. Lancet. 2005;366:136-143.