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CC BY 4.0 · Chinese medicine and natural products 2023; 03(02): e63-e66
DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1769104
Review Article

Acupuncture Clinical Trials on Knee Osteoarthritis

Changzhen Gong
1   American Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Minnesota, United States
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Abstract

The outcomes of eight acupuncture clinical trials on knee osteoarthritis were published in well-regarded English-language mainstream medical journals between 1975 and 2022. Reported trial results were equally balanced between positive and negative outcomes, thus producing an overall impression of ambiguity in regard to the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. This paper reviews these trials, analyzes the factors taken into account in each trial, and has posited two reasons for the continuing lack of consensus in regard to the medical effectiveness of acupuncture: the difficulty of designing scientifically consistent clinical-trial studies; and an institutional bias toward ambiguity on the part of scientific and medical journals.

Keywords

knee osteoarthritis - acupuncture - clinical trials - sham control - medical journals - institutional bias

CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement

C.G. is responsible for writing—original draft, investigation, conceptualization, writing-review and editing.




Publication History

Received: 23 October 2022

Accepted: 11 October 2022

Article published online:
28 June 2023

© 2023. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Georg Thieme Verlag KG
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