You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PEDro Systematic Review Update
Non-specific effects of acupuncture – Does the ‘placebo’ effect play an important role?
  1. Christopher Michael Williams1,
  2. Steve J Kamper1,2
  1. 1Musculoskeletal Division, The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  2. 2EMGO+ Institute, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Christopher Michael Williams, Musculoskeletal Division, The George Institute for Global Health, 341 George St, Sydney, New South Wales 2000, Australia; cwilliams{at}george.org.au

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2012-091229

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    ▶ Linde K, Niemann K, Schneider A, et al. BMC Med 2010;8:75 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/8/75 (accessed 23 November 2010)OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed

    Background

    Evidence for specific effects of acupuncture that are clinically relevant remains contentious. When compared with no treatment, acupuncture is effective.1 However, in comparison to sham or placebo acupuncture, there is a greatly reduced treatment effect.2 Thus, the benefit of the treatment may be due to incidental (and unknown) elements of the intervention. These factors have been called ‘non-specific’ effects; the mechanism is unknown but may be mediated by such factors as patient–practitioner communication, the therapeutic ritual and patient expectations about the treatment. Historically, the term ‘placebo effect’ has been applied to account for these non-specific effects of treatment. However, despite general acceptance of the term, there remains considerable controversy regarding the definition of ‘placebo’. Further, by choosing not to use the term, we favour attempts to move beyond the idea of a placebo as a sort of black box towards elucidation of the elements responsible for its effect. Understanding non-specific treatment effects and integrating these attributes in to practice (eg, enhancing treatment expectations) may help optimise treatment effectiveness.

    Aim

    The primary aim was to investigate the size of the non-specific effects of acupuncture. The secondary aim was to investigate factors that influence the size of non-specific effects such as the type of sham intervention, the condition for which the treatment was applied and study quality.

    Searches and inclusion criteria

    Three electronic …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.