Does acupuncture work?

It seems to, but only in limited cases. The British Medical Journal this week published a review that showed that acupuncture can increase the chances of getting pregnant by 65% in women undergoing fertility treatment.

Acupuncture is thought to have originated in China, and involves inserting thin needles under the skin at specific points to restore health and wellbeing. In clinical studies, it has been shown to help reduce back pain and chronic knee pain.

A major review published last year in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine concluded that emerging clinical evidence showed acupuncture was effective for "some but not all conditions".

How it might work has not been established scientifically. Mike Cummins, the medical director at the British Medical Acupuncture Society, says the most promising ideas are based on acupuncture's potential to affect the nervous system. If an ailment - muscular pain, for example - can be solved by somehow manipulating the nerves, acupuncture might well be useful. "If it's a cancer in some organ that is completely unrelated to the nervous system, there's no way you can have a significant effect," he says.

On the question of fertility, Cummins says acupuncture could be working by helping women to relax before treatment. "Our organ systems are under the control of two nervous aspects - sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic is associated with anxiety and fighting and getting ready for action and fast heart rates. High sympathetic activity is often associated with bad things like heart attacks and high blood pressure. It could be that high resting sympathetic activity in the uterus could be a component to some fertility problems. If you can reduce that you may have a positive effect."

The BMJ study should not be seen in isolation, however. Last year, research carried out by Cardiff University researchers on 818 Danish fertility patients showed that pregnancy rates were 20% lower when women used alternative medicine such as reflexology and acupuncture, when compared with those who did not use such treatments.
Alok Jha