Acupuncture for osteoarthritis of the knee.

Conclusions of a recent meta-analysis (Manheimer et al, 2007), "Sham-controlled trials show clinically irrelevant short-term benefits of acupuncture for treating knee osteoarthritis. Waiting list-controlled trials suggest clinically relevant benefits, some of which may be due to placebo or expectation effects."

• No serious adverse events were reported from acupuncture in this meta-analysis which invovled more than 9 individual Randomized Controlled Trials.
• The Study concluded that"current evidence from several large-scale, high-quality
  RCTs suggests that acupuncture may be an effective treatment for older patients with osteoarthritis of the knee."
• However, they also noted that it was difficult to tell how much of the benefit patients recieved from acupuncture could be attributed to the placebo effect.
• In evaluating the randomized controlled trials which they pooled in this meta-analysis, they found that one study problem was that many patients who were not randomized to receive acupuncture, actually dropped out of the studies.
• This suggests that patients who in rolled in these studies had a likely preference for recieving acupuncture treatement and would simply drop out if they were randomized to a control group.
• Either way, given the favorable safety profile of acupuncture, it may be worth considering for patienst who suffer from osteoarthritis of the knee.

*Please refer to the disclaimer text.

Manheimer E, Linde K, Lao L, Bouter LM, Berman BM. Meta-analysis: acupuncture for osteoarthritis of the knee. Ann Intern Med. 2007 Jun 19;146(12):868-77