Acupuncture not much help for high blood pressure

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Standardized or individualized traditional Chinese acupuncture is no better than a sham procedure in reducing blood pressure in people with hypertension, according to a new report.

Findings from small clinical trials and studies of individual cases have suggested a benefit for acupuncture in treating hypertension, Dr. Eric A. Macklin and colleagues note in the medical journal Hypertension. However, until now, no data from large trials have been reported.

The Stop Hypertension with the Acupuncture Research Program -- dubbed SHARP -- involved 192 subjects with untreated high blood pressure, which averaged about 149/93.

Macklin, from the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Massachusetts, and his team randomly assigned the participants to undergo standardized acupuncture at preselected points, individualized traditional Chinese acupuncture, or sham acupuncture -- that is, needle puncture at non-acupuncture sites.

The subjects underwent up to 12 sessions over 6 to 8 weeks, and their blood pressure was monitored every 2 weeks for 10 weeks.

The average drop in blood pressure from baseline to 10 weeks was similar in each group, with a decline of around 3 points in the upper and lower readings -- not enough to make much difference.

The researchers were unable to find any patient subgroups, based on age, race, gender, baseline blood pressure, or other factors, for which active acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture at reducing blood pressure.

"The money and effort expended in this trial should save even more wasted money and ineffectual effort," Dr. Norman M. Kaplan, from the University of Texas at Dallas, comments in a related editorial -- but he doesn't seem hopeful. "Acupuncture is receiving a number of proofs of inadequacy, but it may turn out that science cannot trump 2500 years of Asian tradition," Kaplan writes.

SOURCE: Hypertension, November 2006.