Does Tailored Acupuncture Relieve Chronic Neck Pain?

TOPLINE:

Patients with chronic neck pain who received acupuncture experienced an alleviation of their symptoms, but not at clinically meaningful levels, compared with those who received sham treatment.

METHODOLOGY:

• A 24-week randomized trial was conducted at four clinical centers in China over a 2-year period starting in 2018.
• A total of 659 patients with chronic neck pain were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: Higher sensitive acupoints (mean age, 38.63 years; 70.41% women; n = 169), lower sensitive acupoints (mean age, 40.21 years; 74.4% women; n = 168), sham acupuncture (mean age, 40.16 years; 75.29% women; n = 170), and a waiting list (mean age, 38.63 years; 69.89% women; n = 176).
• Participants in the acupuncture groups had 10 sessions over 4 weeks and were followed up for 20 weeks. Those in the waiting list group received no treatment.
• The primary outcome was the change in neck pain at 4 weeks, measured on a 0-100 scale. A change of 10 points was considered clinically significant.
• The secondary outcomes were neck pain and movement, quality of life, and use of pain medication over 24 weeks.

TAKEAWAY:

• Acupuncture targeted at higher sensitive points led to a pain score reduction of 12.16 (95% CI, −14.45 to −9.87), while lower sensitive points reduced it by 10.19 (95% CI, −12.43 to −7.95).
• Sham acupuncture reduced the score by 6.11 (95% CI, −8.31 to −3.91), and no treatment reduced it by 2.24 (95% CI, −4.10 to −0.38).
• The higher and lower sensitive acupoint groups showed no clinically significant net differences in pain reduction and secondary outcomes compared with the sham and waiting list groups.
• Differences in reductions in pain between groups all decreased by week 24.

IN PRACTICE:

“The clinical importance of this improvement is unclear. Our results suggest that the selection of pressure pain, sensory-based objective acupoints could be considered as a treatment of CNP [chronic neck pain],” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

This study, led by Ling Zhao, PhD, of Acupuncture and Tuina School at Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chengdu, China, was published online on September 3, 2024, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

LIMITATIONS:

Blinding was not done in the waiting list group. Individuals in the higher and lower sensitive acupoint groups experienced a specific sensation after needle manipulation, which could have influenced the analysis. Additionally, the participants were middle-aged adults with moderate pain, which limited the generalizability to older individuals or those with severe pain.

DISCLOSURES:

The study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Central Guidance on Local Science and Technology Development Fund of Sichuan Province, among others. The authors declared no conflicts of interest outside the submitted work.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.