Acupuncture
How can acupuncture help you?
The Acupuncture Evidence Project is a comparative literature review published in January 2017 by John McDonald and Stephen Janz. The review looks at 136 systematic reviews (27 Cochrane SRs), 3 network meta-analysis, 9 reviews of reviews and 20 other reviews to determine the evidence for acupunctures effectiveness. The findings are:
Evidence of Positive Effect (8 conditions)
Reviews with consistent statistically significant positive effects and where authors have recommended the intervention
- Allergic rhinitis (perennial & seasonal)
- Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) (with anti-emetics)
- Chronic low back pain
- Headache (tension-type and chronic)
- Knee osteoarthritis
- Migraine prophylaxis
- Postoperative nausea & vomiting
- Postoperative pain
Evidence of Potential Positive Effect (38 conditions)
Reviews reporting all individual RCTs or pooled effects across RCTs as positive, but the reviewers deeming the evidence insufficient to draw firm conclusions
- Acute low back pain
- Acute stroke
- Ambulatory anaesthesia
- Anxiety
- Aromatase-inhibitor-induced arthralgia
- Asthma in adults
- Back or pelvic pain during pregnancy
- Cancer pain
- Cancer-related fatigue
- Constipation
- Craniotomy anaesthesia
- Depression (with antidepressants)
- Dry eye
- Hypertension (with medication)
- Insomnia
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Labour pain
- Lateral elbow pain
- Menopausal hot flushes
- Modulating sensory perception thresholds
- Neck pain (NAD, not WAD)
- Obesity
- Perimenopausal& postmenopausal insomnia
- Plantar heel pain
- Post-stroke insomnia
- Post-stroke shoulder pain
- Post-stroke spasticity
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Prostatitis pain/chronic pelvic pain syndrome
- Recovery after colorectal cancer resection
- Restless leg syndrome
- Schizophrenia (with antipsychotics)
- Sciatica
- Shoulder impingement syndrome (early stage) exercise)
- Shoulder pain
- Smoking cessation (up to 3 months)
- Stroke rehabilitation
- Temporomandibular pain
