Acupuncture's claims punctured: not proven effective for pain, not harmless.

摘要

In this issue of Pain Ernst et al. [1], systematically reviewed a decade's worth of systematic reviews of acupuncture. They found a mix of negative, positive, and inconclusive results. There were only four conditions for which more than one systematic review reached the same conclusions, and only one of the four was positive (neck pain). They explain how inconsistencies, biases, conflicting conclusions, and recent high quality studies throw doubt on even the most positive reviews. Ernst et al.'s analysis cannot prove that acupuncture does not work (negatives are hard to prove) but their study unquestionably sheds serious doubt on the claim that it does work. Overall the evidence is inconsistent, and among those studies judged to be of the highest quality, the results tend to be negative.