Newcastle physician pioneers acupuncture treatment for arthritis patients
A prominent Newcastle doctor is joining forces with a leading medical research charity to investigate the effectiveness of a popular form of complementary therapy on people with arthritis of the knee.
Dr Susanne Bower, musculoskeletal physician at the University of Newcastle, is the first researcher in the country to be awarded a grant from the Arthritis Research Campaign to run a clinical trial into acupuncture.
The charity usually awards grants in strictly traditional areas of medical research, from basic science to trials of new drugs or other conventional therapies.
The £24,000 study will last two years, and be carried out on 100 patients in the Newcastle area who are currently on the waiting list for knee replacements.
"We will investigate whether acupuncture is an effective and practicable means by which to manage pain and subsequent disability in patients with knee osteoarthritis, "explained Dr Bower, who is also a lecturer in anaesthesia.
"Clinical experience is encouraging; it has a clinical reputation for greater efficacy and safety than many drugs - as well as being cheaper - but a scientifically valid study is necessary to establish whether the effect is real and lasting.
Dr Bower said in these days of evidence-based medicine, it was essential to produce hard scientific evidence to explain whether different forms of complementary therapy worked or not.
"Acupuncture requires credibility, and we want to produce an orthodox scientific study which will answer questions. If the study is positive towards acupuncture, then the medical establishment will take notice, and it will become accepted - and more widely available for the benefit of patients."
Dr Bower is a keen advocate of "integrated medicine", in which medical practitioners are also trained in complementary therapies.
She teaches a popular seven-week fourth year option in acupuncture, osteopathy, hypnotherapy and homeopathy to medical students at the University of Newcastle, which was the first medical school to make complementary therapies part of the core curriculum for third year medical students.
A spokeswoman for the ARC said there was enormous public interest in complementary therapies among arthritis patients, and there was a corresponding need to prove or disprove whether they were effective, or simply a waste of patients' money.
· The ARC also awarded a two-year grant of £77,000 to Dr Mark Birch in the department of trauma and orthopaedic surgery at the University of Newcastle for an investigation into the role of the ADAM-TS family of protein enzymes in bone formation.
The ARC raised almost £23m over the past 12 months to fund research into arthritis, entirely from public donations. Newcastle is a leading centre of research, and is currently in receipt of 11 grants from the charity, totalling £2.5m.
