Complementary therapies in medicine
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Complement Ther Med · Dec 2003
Review Comparative StudySham interventions in randomized clinical trials of acupuncture--a review.
For non-drug interventions such as acupuncture, it is difficult to establish placebo or sham controls that are both inert and indistinguishable. We reviewed sham-controlled clinical trials of acupuncture to investigate (a) which types of sham interventions have been used in the past; (b) in what respects true and sham interventions differed; and (c) whether trials using different types of sham yielded different results. ⋯ Randomized trials investigating the specific effects of acupuncture have used a great variety of sham interventions as controls. Summarizing all the different sham interventions as "placebo" controls seems misleading and scientifically unacceptable.