Acupuncture for chronic pain

Acupuncture has been used to treat health conditions including pain for over 3000 years, yet it has only been in the last half a century that biochemistry and neural imaging advances have allowed scientific understanding of its physiological mechanisms. This treatise reviews the multiple lines of evidence that the endogenous opioid system is involved in acupuncture's pain-relieving mechanisms, and that the peripheral and central nervous systems are intimately involved in the transduction of acupuncture point stimulation via needling. Large, scientifically rigorous, controlled clinical trials of acupuncture for treating neck, lumbar, migraine, knee osteoarthritis, and other pain conditions have been performed in the last 2 decades that confirm acupuncture's clinical efficacy in treating chronic pain. Beyond its demonstrated efficacy in treating chronic pain, acupuncture's excellent safety record and cost-effectiveness compared to other interventions for chronic pain offer the potential that increased incorporation of acupuncture in managing patients with chronic pain could reduce the costs associated with their health care.