[Analysis of the Puzzle between Acupuncture Community and Acupuncture Clinical Trials]

Recently a number of acupuncture clinical trial projects mainly conducted by conventional scientists have generated many negative results. A large meta-analysis of patient-level acupuncture data for the treatment of chronic pain conditions have demonstrated that the effects of verum acupuncture on pain improvement have statistically significant, but small, differences compared with sham-acupuncture procedures and no difference between acupuncture points and non-points. These conclusions have puzzled the acupuncture community and made confusion for acupuncture research and practices. The purpose of this paper was to compare differences between acupuncture clinical practices and the trial studies, which include "acupuncture technical principles", "acupuncture clinical trial design", and "acupuncture practice based on the theory of traditional Chinese medicine". These factors contribute to the puzzle between the acupuncture community/practice and acupuncture clinical trials, which can be improved in future studies.