| Sumario: | The article offers a look at the efficacy of acupuncture. Acupuncture, rooted in a 3,000-year-old tradition of yin and yang, meridians and chi, has to work hard to prove it has scientific validity. It has been known for a decade that merely anticipating receiving acupuncture has an effect on areas of the brain that release chemicals called endorphins. These are natural opiates that are involved in the suppression of pain, and this anticipation-driven response is believed to be responsible for the placebo effect--the fact that merely believing a treatment will help means that it actually does help. But George Lewith, a researcher at the University of Southampton, in England, who has studied the technique for 25 years, has evidence that it does. Dr Lewith and his colleagues studied 14 patients suffering from arthritis. Each was subjected, in random order, to three treatments. One "treatment" was to be jabbed with blunt needles. Patients knew in advance that this had no therapeutic value, and was there simply to set a baseline. While all this was going on, the patients had their brains scanned using a technique called positron-emission tomography, which measures blood flow. During the third type, a zone called the insula ipsilateral lit up. This is not an endorphin-rich part of the brain; it is, nevertheless, believed to be involved in the inhibition of pain. Dr Lewith has thus demonstrated for the first time that the neurological effects of acupuncture go beyond the placebo effect.
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