Efficacy of acupuncture in pain relief and function improvement in ankylosing spondylitis: a randomized controlled trial
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-0190.v15i4a103000Keywords:
Spondylitis Ankylosing, Acupuncture, PainAbstract
Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) is a chronic disease that leads to musculoskeletal sequelae, functional impairment and pain. In spite of a crescent number of patients seeking acupuncture as an analgesic therapy, only a few studies verified the acupuncture efficacy in controlled trials The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture for spinal pain relief in AS patients. Double-blind randomized placebo-controlled pilot from the Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Sao Paulo. Ten AS patients suffering from spinal pain were studied to evaluate the effect of ten sessions of classic acupuncture, two times per week, against sham electrical stimulation. Before and after intervention assessment included spinal pain, spinal mobility (Schöber test, Fingers-to-floor distance, Occiput-to-wall distance, and chest expansion), inflammation (BASDAI, acute-phase reactants, number of drugs taken), subjective patient assessment, and function (BASFI).Results: Classic acupuncture was no better than sham electrical stimulation in all outcome measures (p = 0.0625). However, the effect size for pain relief was 2.04 for acupuncture and 1.09 for the sham, both considered comparable with the standard treatments for AS. If evaluated by the Sign test, both acupuncture and sham interventions showed significant results (p = 0.0313). Acupuncture does not seem to be better than sham acupuncture for relieving pain in patients with AS. The relevant response in sham group may provide some evidence of a beneficial, subjective effect as an important component of pain relief in AS patients. The trial is registered under the number ISRCTN02971192 at http://isrctn.org
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