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In a report published in the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Journals Library, the researchers showed that there is significant evidence to demonstrate that acupuncture provides more than a placebo effect. Professor of Acupuncture Research, Hugh MacPherson, working with a team of scientists from the UK and US, brought together the results of 29 high quality clinical trials focused on patients treated with acupuncture and standard medical care. In the majority of these trials, patients with chronic pain treated with acupuncture and standard medical care were tested against those who were provided with standard medical care alone, such as anti-inflammatory drugs and physiotherapy. The trials involved approximately 18,000 patients diagnosed with chronic pain of the neck, lower back, head, and knee. The report shows that the addition of acupuncture compared to standard medical care alone significantly reduced the number of headaches and migraine attacks and reduced t...

"The fact that we could see these connectivity patterns in the brain at birth helps answer a critical question about whether they could be responsible for early symptoms linked to depression and anxiety or whether these symptoms themselves lead to changes in the brain," said Cynthia Rogers, MD, an assistant professor of child psychiatry. "We have found that already at birth, brain connections may be responsible for the development of problems later in life." Initially, Dr. Rogers and her team set out to identify differences in functional brain connectivity -- the coordination of activity across different parts of the brain -- between babies born prematurely and others born at full term. They conducted functional MRI scans in 65 full-term newborns and 57 premature infants born at least ten weeks early. The latter were scanned on or near their due dates. The researchers looked for differences in the connectivity patterns across various regions of the brain hopi...