1 Western doctors have long doubted patients like Alain Franques, who says acupuncture controlled his asthma when drugs failed. Now a critical analysis of meager data concludes there's tantalizing evidence the ancient treatment does help.
2 Using acupuncture as an aid in the treatment of respiratory disease might be safer than prolonged use of drugs alone, Dr. Kim Jobst of Oxford University wrote in Friday's debut issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
3 Jobst urged scientists to immediately start rigorous study to prove that, a call that comes as the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to give its stamp of approval to acupuncture.
4 Acupuncture, which evolved 5,000 years ago in China, is based on the principle of chi, an invisible network of energy that is supposed to keep organs functioning. Acupuncture needles are to stimulate chi's circulation.
5 Acupuncture has never been proved to Western standards but, because it predates the FDA and hasn't been shown to be dangerous, it is widely practiced. Americans made some 9 million visits to acupuncturists last year, for everything from asthma to pain.
6 But FDA approval would open the treatment to insurance coverage and wider use -- and mark the first government nod to a treatment based entirely outside mainstream medicine.
7 Critics question how needles simply stuck into certain points on the body could help so many diverse ailments. But for the FDA to classify acupuncture needles as safe and effective medical devices, it needs proof that they help just one disease -- and Jobst contends asthma may be the candidate.
8 'You get stress and stress gives you asthma. Acupuncture helps to relieve the stress,' explained Franques, who says weekly visits to a Washington clinic reduced his asthma from daily attacks to about three a month.
9 At the request of the National Institutes of Health, Jobst culled the scientific research of acupuncture's effect on chronic lung diseases. Most of the 16 studies had major scientific flaws, including too few patients and missing data, he wrote.
10 Still, acupuncture showed signs of effectiveness in 62 percent of cases, Jobst concluded. Despite the weaknesses, there was some clear evidence that acupuncture patients suffered fewer attacks and needed fewer doses of traditional asthma drugs, he said.
11 Because patients can improve from the mere psychological effect of being treated, medicine traditionally is tested against a placebo. Only eight studies attempted that, needling their control patients in so-called 'sham' points, slightly off usual acupuncture targets. But Jobst noted that the Chinese insist sham points for many diseases still work on lung ailments. When he re-evaluated the sham points, he concluded that 80 percent of the research signals acupuncture may work.
12 Nobody should abandon asthma drugs for acupuncture, Jobst emphasized. The research is tantalizing but 'does not permit any definitive conclusions,' he warned, calling on scientists to quickly settle the issue.
13 'Given the problems we have treating asthma, Dr. Jobst has concluded there's enough evidence and frankly enough need to study this alternative . to develop guidelines for doctors,' explained Dr. Marc Micozzi. He is director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine and editor of the new journal, the first to scrutinize alternative medicine in the same manner as mainstream medical journals.
14 Already, the NIH has begun funding dlrs 2.5 million in acupuncture-and-asthma studies, and the FDA, which got a sneak preview of Jobst's work, anticipates presenting the overall acupuncture debate to a scientific hearing by summer.
15 The FDA cautions that evaluating acupuncture is harder than watching a drug kill disease in a test tube.
16 'We're looking at alternative therapies where there's scanty evidence,' said FDA device chief Dr. Bruce Burlington. 'It's a question of: How do we establish the benefit?'

Using acupuncture as an aid in the treatment of respiratory disease might be safer than prolonged use of drugs alone , Dr . Kim Jobst of Oxford University wrote in Friday ' s debut issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine .
prolonged use of drugs alone ,
What types of drugs were considered in this meta-analysis?