Authors from the USA have carried out a systematic review showing that the protocols for blinding in acupuncture studies are generally effective, and that patients cannot determine if they have received verum acupuncture or a different procedure. One of the most frequent criticisms of acupuncture research is that participants could be reporting positive results from treatment because they know they have received active acupuncture rather than a placebo treatment. The new study shows that this is unfounded. The authors included data from 54 sham-controlled RCTs (4783 subjects) that assessed blinding in their analysis. The results showed that the most common scenario involved patients in blinded studies believing that they had received verum acupuncture regardless of the actual treatment received. They concluded that subject blinding in acupuncture studies was satisfactory. (Blinding measured: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials of acupuncture. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2013;2013:708251).
Categories: Acupuncture research
