Acupuncture for osteoarthritis of knee (OAK)

Osteoarthritis (OA) is most commonly located in the knee and is a major cause of pain, activity limitation and health care utilisation, especially among older people. There appears to be an unmet need for better treatment for this condition. A systematic review and recent randomised trials have provided some evidence that acupuncture is more effective than placebo for osteoarthritis of the knee. There remained however a number of substantive questions regarding effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of acupuncture for OA of the knee in primary care. 

With Harriet Lansdown, a Medical Research Council funded MSc student at the University of York, we conducted a pilot study as a platform for a full-scale cost-effectiveness study using a pragmatic randomised trial RCT design.(Lansdown et al, 2009)[Abstract][Full Text] 

More recently, we have conducted a multiple treatment comparison of physical therapies for osteoarthritis of the knee. This involved a network meta-analysis comparing all physical therapies against each other. The project was funded within the £1.3m award in the form of a National Institue for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grant for Applied Research. The results of this analysis indicated that acupuncture is one of the more effective therapies for knee pain due to osteoarthritis (Corbett et al 2013) [Free full text] Data on a parallel economic evaluation estimating the cost-effectiveness of acupuncture and other physical therapies for osteoarthritis followed (Woods et al 2017).​[Open Access]

Key publication:

Corbett MS, Rice SJC, Madurasinghe V, Slack R, Fayter DA, Harden  M, Sutton AJ, MacPherson H, Woolacott NF.  Acupuncture and other physical treatments for the relief of pain due  to osteoarthritis of the knee: network meta-analysis. Osteoarthr Cartil. 2013 Sep;21(9):1290–8.[Free full text] 

Other publications:

Woods B, Manca A, Weatherly H, Saramago P, Sideris E, Giannopoulou C, et al. Cost-effectiveness of adjunct non-pharmacological interventions for osteoarthritis of the knee. PLOS ONE. 2017 Mar 7;12(3):e0172749. 

Lansdown H, Howard K, Stephen Brealey S, Hugh MacPherson H. Acupuncture for pain and osteoarthritis of the knee: a pilot study for an open parallel-arm randomised controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. 2009 Oct 24;10:130.[Abstract][Free Full Text]