The study was conducted with 1,162 adults, average age 50 who suffered from chronic back pain for at least eight years. All underwent 30-minute sessions, two per week, which however were different.

A first group of patients was treated with verum acupuncture (387), another group with sham acupuncture (387 patients) and a third group with conventional therapy (388 patients).

In acupuncture “verum” are inserted between 14 and 20 needles up to 4 inches in parts of the body until the patient experiences a numbing sensation, called Qi. Sham acupuncture needles inserted more superficially in the back and avoid the traditional Chinese points. For his part, applied to conventional therapy control group consisted of drug administration and exercise.

Throughout the study were administered a total of 13,475 treatments: 4,821 verum acupuncture, sham acupuncture 4,590 and 4,064 conventional therapy. The 59.9 percent of the verum acupuncture group required additional sessions, and this percentage decreased to 54.3 percent in the sham acupuncture group and 52.5 percent in the conventional therapy group.