Acupuncture
sticks it to pain, brain MRI shows
By
Robert Davis
Mon., Dec. 6, 1999
USA TODAY
Doctors are using state-of-the-art technology to better
understand the age-old pain relieving abilities of
acupuncture.
"People are still skeptical about acupuncture as a
treatment," says Hyey-Jen Lee of the University of Medicine
and Dentistry of New Jersey, who used a functional MRI to
scan test subjects' brains in pain-with and without
acupuncture.
His dramatic findings, presented at the Radiological
Society of North America meeting in Chicago, show that
"acupuncture relieves pain."
It is thought to be the first time the functional MRI,
which can show how the brain reacts to various stimuli, has
been used to test acupuncture's effectiveness in fighting
pain.
Lee's team subjected a dozen volunteers to the same painful
stimulus by pushing a rod into the upper lip. The sensation
was more like a pinch than a needle stick.
Then the team applied acupuncture, a therapy in which thin
needles are inserted into the skin at specific spots called
meridians. The acupuncture needle was inserted at what is
known as the hegu point between the thumb and the
forefinger on the hand. The rod was applied again to the
lip, and another MRI image was made.
The images show big reductions in pain after the
acupuncture treatment, Lee says.
"The finding is dramatic," says Wen-Ching Liu, another
physician on the research team. "This will be very
important for the physicians who want to apply this
treatment. This is concrete information."
Insurance companies are increasingly covering acupuncture
treatment for pain, in part because it has none of the side
effects that come with modern medicine's drug
therapies.
