Rheumatoid arthritis pain hurts. Acupuncture can make it better … or can it? So many rumors are floating around about alternative therapies, you don’t know what to believe. That’s why we found a recent study you’ll want to know about.

Chronic rheumatoid arthritis pain patients are increasingly turning to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to manage their condition. All told, about 90 percent of patients seek some sort of alternative therapy to augment traditional medicine.

Acupuncture, diets, herbal medicine, homeopathy, massage and supplements are all widely available. Of these, acupuncture has been shown to be effective for many painful conditions, including knee osteoarthritis.

What is Acupuncture Treatment?
Defined as the stimulation, using needles, of certain points on the body, acupuncture treatment is believed to prevent or modify the perception of pain. Acupuncture may even alter physiologic functions.

In most cases, acupuncture treatment is limited to the manual stimulation of metal needles, but other forms are used. In moxibustion acupuncture, the moxa herb is burned at the free end of the needle, while electrical stimulation and heat stimulation of the needles are also popular.

Injection acupuncture treatment is sometimes employed. In this case, herbal extracts are injected into acupuncture points. It’s unclear which type of acupuncture is best at relieving pain.

Although recent literature supports the use of acupuncture treatment to relieve pain and improve joint function in osteoarthritis of the knee, little has been done to study this alternative therapy in inflammatory joint diseases. Problems with methodology bring into question the results of studies that were done.

Acupuncture Treatment and Rheumatoid Arthritis
With that in mind, researchers from four prominent institutions undertook to evaluate the benefits of three forms of acupuncture treatment on patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

A pilot study was performed to validate outcome measures , and to get results on the efficacy and tolerability of the acupuncture treatments: electroacupuncture (EA), traditional Chinese acupuncture (TCA) and sham acupuncture (Sham).

Refractory rheumatoid arthritis patients were selected. These are people whose rheumatoid arthritis has not responded to conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy.

Participants were chosen from among 80 patients. Thirty-six patients with a mean age of 58 and rheumatoid arthritis duration of about three to 16 years were randomly assigned to three groups of 12 patients each. Twelve, 10 and seven patients from the EA, TCA and Sham group respectively finished the 20-week study.

Needling Success
All patients underwent 20 sessions of acupuncture lasting 40 minutes each provided by a registered practitioner with more than 10 years of experience. Sterile, disposable needles were inserted in six points twice a week, over a duration of 10 weeks.

Patients in both the EA and TCA groups felt a sense of “heaviness, soreness or numbness” where needles were inserted. Known as “de Qi,” the sensation is a sign that the acupuncture points have been correctly stimulated.

Acupuncture for Rheumatoid Arthritis Results
Results showed a significant reduction in the number of tender joints for both the EA and TCA groups at week 10, while the pain score in all three groups was unchanged. The physician’s global score for the EA group was significantly reduced, as was the patient’s global score in the TCA group. In the Sham group, all outcomes remained the same except for the patient’s global score.

The study found that both electroacupuncture and traditional Chinese acupuncture may serve as a valuable adjunct to drug therapy by reducing the number of tender joints in patients with refractory rheumatoid arthritis, as compare to sham acupuncture.

Lai-Shan Tam et al, Acupuncture in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a double-blind controlled pilot study. 2007 Complementary Alternative Medicine 7: 35.