Acupuncture for Pulmonary Disease

In the debut issue of the US published Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Dr. Kim Jobst of Oxford University has evaluated 16 papers on the use of acupuncture in pulmonary disease.

Acupuncture had been found to be effective in 4 of 8 double-blind studies, 3 of 5 single-blind studies, and 3 of 3 unblinded studies, with an overall effective rate of 62.5%. However, Dr. Jobst re-evaluated those studies where the effectiveness of specifically selected acupuncture points were judged against selection of ’sham’ acupuncture points.

‘Sham’ points can be of two kinds – sham true points and sham nonpoints. He found that a) sham nonpoints, i.e. sites that did not correlate to any existing acupuncture point, nevertheless had significant subjective and objective effects on pulmonary diseases, and that b) the sham true points selected for control in other studies were in fact points that, according to TCM, did have effect in some respiratory diseases. By assessing the effectiveness of any kind of needling in the 16 studies (whether true points, sham true points or sham nonpoints were used), the overall effective rate rose to 81%. In 10 of the 11 (91%) studies which evaluated it, it was found that medication could be significantly reduced by acupuncture.

Dr. Jobst concludes that acupuncture is a safe and effective treatment for patients with bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive lung disease.