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.
