Acupuncture
This page delivers no verdict; it presents claims and evidence with their sources. No theory in science is absolute. Method
For everyone
In traditional Chinese medicine, needles inserted at specific points on the body are held to regulate the flow of "qi" energy. In chronic pain, real acupuncture has been reported to show a clear difference compared with no treatment, and a small difference compared with sham (superficial or wrong-point) acupuncture. The clinical meaning of this small difference is disputed.
For specialists
An individual-patient-data meta-analysis by Vickers and colleagues, covering 39 trials and about 20,000 patients, reported that real acupuncture was more effective than sham and than no-acupuncture control in chronic pain; the difference from sham was about 0.2 standard deviations. Critics argue that the small difference between sham and real acupuncture can be explained by incomplete blinding and bias, and describe acupuncture as a "theatrical placebo".
Claims
- Acupuncture has an effect on chronic pain beyond placebo.[1]
Evidence
Supporting
In an individual-data meta-analysis of about 20,000 patients, real acupuncture showed a significant but small difference from sham, with the effect reported to persist largely for a year.[1]
Challenging
It was argued that the difference between real and sham acupuncture is clinically trivial and explainable by bias, and that acupuncture is a placebo.[2]
Connections
Sources
- Article (2018). Acupuncture for chronic pain: update of an individual patient data meta-analysis. The Journal of Pain 19(5), 455–474DOI 10.1016/j.jpain.2017.11.005archive
- Article (2013). Acupuncture is theatrical placebo. Anesthesia & Analgesia 116(6), 1360–1363DOI 10.1213/ANE.0b013e31828f2d5earchive
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Cite this page
Athena contributors. (2026). Acupuncture. Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/akupunktur/
@misc{athena_akupunktur,
title = {Acupuncture},
author = {{Athena contributors}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/akupunktur/}},
note = {Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Accessed: 2026-11-01}
}Added: September 27, 2026 · Last changed: September 27, 2026 · Page history