Since the report of acupuncture by James Restone in the
United States in early 1970s, acupuncture as a modality has been significantly
increased its popularity in the Western countries. Effectiveness of acupuncture
for many conditions such as pain has been widely recognized. However, for
acupuncture research the major impetus in the United States occurred in 1998, when
the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (now the
National Centre for Complementary and Integrative Health) was established
within the National Institutes of Health. Since then development of acupuncture
research made good progress regarding to effectiveness of acupuncture and
understanding of mechanisms of action of acupuncture.
Recently, Professor Hugh MacPherson and colleagues summarised
some unexpected and broad-reaching discoveries that materialize when biomedicine
and acupuncture encounter in the context of objective and systematic scientific
exploration.
1. Acupuncture
stimulation increased release of endorphins leading to wider range of analgesia
research.
2. Increased
interesting in connective tissue research in health and disease because insertion
of acupuncture needle into connective tissue produce many local changes lead to
mechanotransduction study.
3. Toward
better understanding of placebo effect. The use of the sham acupuncture needle
as a unique placebo device has assisted researchers in identifying key components
of treatment that may enhance the effect of placebo.
4. Acupuncture-related
devices that have beneficial effect on biomedicine, such as transcutaneous
electrical nerve stimulation units for analgesia and acupressure bands for
relief of nausea.
5. Pragmatic
clinical trials. Acupuncture research in pain helped the evolution of clinical
research towards more pragmatic randomized controlled trials, as a part of
comparative effectiveness research.
Those unexpected ripple effect of acupuncture research
identified by authors not only are the clearest examples of this scientific
cross-fertilization, but provide additional rationale for continued support of research
evaluating acupuncture therapy.
Reference
MacPherson H, et al., Unanticipated Insights into
Biomedicine from the Study of Acupuncture. J Altern Complement Med. 2016
Feb;22(2):101-7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26745452
