Acupuncture has been around for ages, but its use in western medicine is quite controversial. Researchers in Spain tried adding acupuncture to drugs for arthritic knees.

What the researchers wanted to know: How well does acupuncture work on knee arthritis that's already being treated with drugs?

What they did: The researchers recruited 97 patients ages 45 or older with arthritis in one or both knees. Each patient was randomly assigned to get 12 weeks of diclofenac (Cataflam or Voltaren) plus acupuncture or diclofenac plus placebo acupuncture. The same acupuncturist, who is accredited by the Beijing University of Medical Sciences, did the real and fake acupuncture. In the real acupuncture, he stuck needles into the appropriate points; in the placebo version, the needles were in little cylinders that would stick to the skin but not go into it. None of the patients had had acupuncture treatment before, so they didn't know what it was supposed to feel like. Patients rated their knees' pain, stiffness, and physical function before and after the test.

What they found: Patients who had acupuncture were better off than those who had placebo acupuncture. Their knees hurt less and functioned better. They also used fewer of the drug tablets they'd been given.

What the study means to you: Acupuncture might work. There have been a lot of studies on it, though, with conflicting results, so this probably shouldn't be viewed as the final word.

Caveats: The whole problem with testing acupuncture—or any treatment—is that just knowing you've had something done can improve how you feel about your problem. While it's easy to give people a placebo in drug trials, a procedure is a lot harder to fake. Here, the researchers didn't ask patients which treatment they thought they'd gotten; it's possible that patients who got real acupuncture knew it and felt better because of it. The researchers also don't know if the acupuncturist acted differently with the real and fake patients. And follow-up was short; the patients' last visit was only one week after the treatment ended.

Find out more: Drug information on diclofenac from the National Library of Medicine

Read the article: Vas, J. et al. "Acupuncture as a Complementary Therapy to the Pharmacological Treatment of Osteoarthritis of the Knee: Randomized Controlled Trial." British Medical Journal. Nov. 20, 2004, Vol. 329, pp. 1216–1219.

Abstract online: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com