DRUG TREATMENT STUDY LOOKS AT ACUPUNCTURE

Acupuncture Can Really Stick It To Cocaine Addiction.

A Yale University team, working with cocaine and heroin addicts, has
found that an acupuncture technique already used with drug addicts was
more effective than a placebo form of acupuncture or relaxation
therapy. The study was the first to compare acupuncture to relaxation
and a tested placebo.

The finding holds promise not only for drug treatment but also for
rigorous studies of alternative therapies, according to Arthur
Margolin, the study's principal investigator and a research scientist
at the Yale University School of Medicine. The study is published in
the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study looked at 82 subjects who were addicted to heroin and
cocaine and who were being treated with methadone for their heroin
addiction. They were randomly assigned to one of three groups, which
offered treatment five times a week for eight weeks. One group got the
real thing, while another group got the sham acupuncture and a third
received relaxation therapy.

About half of those receiving the acupuncture technique -- 53.8
percent -- tested free of cocaine during the last week of treatment,
compared to 23.5 percent in the placebo group and 9.1 percent in the
relaxation group. Those who completed acupuncture treatment also had
longer periods of sustained abstinence compared to participants in the
other groups.

Although acupuncture is among the most mainstream alternative
therapies, there has been some controversy over how to scientifically
evaluate it. In pharmaceutical tests, subjects are randomly assigned
to receive either the active drug or a placebo -- an inert "sugar
pill." Ideally, neither the patients nor those administering the pills
know who is getting the real drug until the test is over.

It is not quite so easy to create a placebo treatment when assessing
acupuncture, which involves insertion of needles into a body along
meridians or energy channels mapped out in traditional Asian medicine.
The Yale team did preliminary work to find an area of the outer ear on
which the needles would have little effect. As a result, the rolled,
outer surface of the ear -- the helix -- was chosen as the needle site
for the placebo group.

For the real acupuncture, Margolin's group used the National
Acupuncture Detoxification Association treatment protocol, developed
more than a decade ago at New York's Lincoln Hospital. This method
involves the insertion of three to five small needles into the
"concha" of the outer ear -- the bowl-like surface near the ear canal.

He acknowledged that while a host of theories attempt to explain how
body acupuncture works, little research has been done on the mechanism
through which acupuncture on the ear works to curb addiction.

A leading theory, according to Janet Konefal, associate professor of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences and chief of the division of
complementary medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine,
is that acupuncture triggers a response among neurotransmitters -- the
brain's messenger chemicals -- that interfere with the biochemical
process of craving and addiction.

Researchers in Hong Kong stumbled into this effect three decades ago
when opium addicts volunteered for a study on acupuncture and pain,
and reported that the technique decreased their craving for drugs.

Margolin emphasized that the Yale study further opens the door on
research into acupuncture and addiction, but is far from the last
word. Subjects in the study received both individual and group
psychotherapy, and he said more work needs to be done to determine the
type of psychotherapy -- or mix of therapies -- that work best with
acupuncture to fight addiction.