The British Medical Journal (BMJ) now has a whole section on #acupuncture, which includes guidance on clinical #trials, economic analysis, and development of clinical practice guidelines (1). Acupuncture is now recommended in many countries as a viable #treatment strategy for the management of various conditions and has found a growing place in integrative #medicine (2).
And in addition to that, Stephen Birch et al have been documenting the number of clinical practice guidelines and treatment guidelines recommending for or against acupuncture for some years now. At the ICMART conference in Bologna in October (3) Birch presented the team’s latest figures, namely 9,340 recommendations for acupuncture and 402 against. Most of the recommendations against were based on “insufficient evidence”. Recently Stephen has turned his attention to Australian Federal and State Government Health Departments’ advice on acupuncture published on sponsored or recommended websites.