Acupuncture appears to relieve the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia no better than sham acupuncture procedures, according to new study findings.

The investigators found that people with fibromyalgia who received Acupuncture for fibromyalgia twice per week for 12 weeks were no more likely to report decreases in pain than people who received acupuncture designed for a different condition, needles inserted into random locations, or simulated Acupuncture without needles.

Study author Dr. Dedra Buchwald of the University of Washington in Seattle noted that there are many possible explanations for why the acupuncture may not have worked.

The treatment may not have been customized enough for each patient’s needs. Participants also had fibromyalgia for a long time, making them “among the most difficult patients with this condition to treat,” she said.

Alternatively, Acupuncture may simply not work for fibromyalgia, Buchwald noted. “Our study cannot distinguish between these alternatives,” she said.

Fibromyalgia is a disorder marked by widespread muscle pain and tenderness, fatigue and sleep problems. To be diagnosed with the condition, a person must have pain or tenderness in a number of specific “tender points” on the body.

The cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, but researchers generally believe that people with the condition have “amplified” pain signals due to abnormal sensory processing in the central nervous system.

Up to 9 out of 10 people with fibromyalgia say they use at least one type of alternative medicine, including acupuncture. To investigate how well the treatment may work for this condition, Buchwald and her colleagues asked 100 people with fibromyalgia to try Acupuncture or sham forms of the treatment, and to rate their pain levels up to 6 months after treatment.

“No differences in pain were identified between acupuncture and sham acupuncture,” the researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

They add that additional research should investigate how well Acupuncture treats other types of chronic pain, and the effectiveness of other forms of alternative medicine in fibromyalgia.

SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, July 2005.