NICE has published a draft guideline on the treatment of chronic pain. This finds that long-term prescription of analgesics such as paracetamol, non-steroidals, and opioids is ineffective and has important unwanted effects. However, acuuncture iks one of the recommended alternatives. They find 27 studies showig that acupuncture reduces pain and improves quality of life for up to 3 months compared with usual care or sham acupuncture, although they acknowledge the difficulty of blnding in trials involving sham.
They acknowledge