Is acupuncture an effective treatment for knee osteoarthritis?
Max H Pittler* and Edzard Ernst
Correspondence *Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, 25 Victoria Park Road, Exeter EX2 4NT, UK
Email max.pittler@pms.ac.uk
This article has no abstract so we have provided the first paragraph of the full text.
This meta-analysis by Manheimer and colleagues is an important addition to the existing literature on the use of acupuncture for the treatment of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. The analysis includes the most recent large-scale randomized trials of acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis performed in Germany, and the conclusions presented by the authors reflect the current state of the available evidence on this topic. The authors conclude that although the trials included in their analysis show small, significant effects of acupuncture compared with sham acupuncture, these benefits are clinically irrelevant. The authors also suggest that nonspecific effects are largely responsible for the perceived treatment effects of acupuncture in patients with knee osteoarthritis.
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