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(Hypertension. 2006;48:815.)
© 2006 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial Commentaries

Acupuncture for Hypertension

Can 2500 Years Come to an End?

Norman M. Kaplan

From the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, Tex.

Correspondence to Norman M. Kaplan, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, TX 75390-8899. E-mail norman.kaplan@utsouthwestern.edu

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

As one who tried and failed, I sincerely admire the accomplishments of the Stop Hypertension with the Acupuncture Research Program (SHARP) described in this issue of Hypertension.¹ As Macklin et al¹ note, this is the largest double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial of acupuncture for treating hypertension to date. When the work involved in reaching their definitive conclusion is considered, it seems likely (and hopefully) to be the last such trial of acupuncture for hypertension. Again quoting Macklin et al, "Acupuncture has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat symptoms related to hypertension for over 2500 years" and "Today, acupuncture is commonly used to treat hypertension in China and the West."¹

The amount of time, energy, and money expended to use acupuncture for hypertension over the past 2500 years can hardly be imagined. They must be bigger than Star Wars or NASA’s exploration of space. Millions of patients have been punctured with long needles put in strange places with the expectations of benefit likely providing the largest noncontrolled experience in medical history. Almost certainly, most have thought their blood pressure came down, but there has never before been a proper trial to find if this was a real or placebo effect.

Now, finally, with funding by the National Institutes of Health National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, a group of investigators has put the procedure to the test of modern clinical research. With only a fraction of the money and personnel used in the SHARP trial, we tried . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Related Article:

Stop Hypertension With the Acupuncture Research Program (SHARP): Results of a Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trial

Eric A. Macklin, Peter M. Wayne, Leslie A. Kalish, Peter Valaskatgis, James Thompson, May C.M. Pian-Smith, Qunhao Zhang, Stephanie Stevens, Christine Goertz, Ronald J. Prineas, Beverly Buczynski, and Randall M. Zusman
Hypertension 2006 48: 838-845. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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