For chronic headaches, the best treatment can be one of the oldest: acupuncture.
In 1998, the national institutes of health accepted acupuncture as an alternate useful treatment for headaches, but cautioned that there was no sufficient clinical trials to draw firm conclusions about its effectiveness. A systematic review of studies by 2007 now comes to the conclusion that acupuncture provides greater relief medication or a placebo.
The report, appearing in the December edition of anesthesia and Analgesia, revised 25 randomized controlled trials in adults that last more than four weeks. In seven trials compared acupuncture with medication, the researchers found that 62 percent of 479 patients had a significant acupuncture response and only 45 per cent to the medicine.
Fourteen of the studies, with a total of 961 patients, compared with a placebo acupuncture, a treatment in which patients led to believe that they were receiving acupuncture. Of these, 53 per cent found some relief of the pain with acupuncture, compared with 45 percent who felt better with placebo. In four trials comparing acupuncture with massage, massage worked better than acupuncture, but these studies were too small to draw statistically significant conclusions.
"People who receive acupuncture prefer to medication, due to possible side effects of drugs," said Dr. Tong j. Gan, co-author of the review and a Professor of Anesthesiology at Duke. "This is an alternative therapy that is beginning to move into the mainstream."
?More articles in health? a version of this article appeared in print on December 16, 2008, on page D6 of the New York Edition.
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