Acupuncture may stick it to chronic lower back pain

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-09-13 01:00

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International researchers say they have pinned down a means to helping people with disability-inducing chronic lower back pain. The team found acupuncture needling - both a standard course and additional maintenance sessions - improved the pain-relative disability for older adults who had chronic lower back pain at six and 12-month follow-ups. The team divided 800 older adults into three groups: those who received standard acupuncture, enhanced acupuncture, or standard medical care. At six months, the participants answered a chronic lower back pain specific disability questionnaire, and the researchers say both of the groups that were getting poked reported significantly better outcomes compared to those who went through standard medical care. Additionally, the secondary benefits that the authors reported were that the participants who received acupuncture had reduced pain intensity and clinically meaningful improvements to their disability.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, USA

Funder: This work was supported by grants UG3AT010739 and UH3AT010739 from the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory through the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative, administered by the NCCIH, with additional scientific support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). This work also received logistical and technical support from grant U24 AT010961 from the Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain to Reduce Opioid Prescribing Resource Coordinating Center from the NIH through the NIH HEAL Initiative and from grant U24 AT009676 from the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory Coordinating Center from the NCCIH; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); the National Cancer Institute (NCI); the NIA; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI); the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR); the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD); the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS); the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR); and the NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP).

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