REVIEW

Clinical acupuncture research in the West

  • Xianze Meng 1,3 ,
  • Shifen Xu 2,3 ,
  • Lixing Lao , 3
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  • 1. Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200001, China
  • 2. Shanghai Municipal Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine affiliated with Shanghai TCM University, Shanghai 200071, China
  • 3. Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 520 West Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA

Received date: 10 Mar 2011

Accepted date: 11 Apr 2011

Published date: 05 Jun 2011

Copyright

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Abstract

In recent years, acupuncture has rapidly become part of mainstream medicine in the West, where new developments in acupuncture clinical research show extensive progress in evaluating the efficacy and safety of the modality in many categories of disease, especially in pain conditions. Although challenges and difficulties remain, the acupuncture research community has matured and its past experience may lead to even better methods and more innovative research.

Cite this article

Xianze Meng , Shifen Xu , Lixing Lao . Clinical acupuncture research in the West[J]. Frontiers of Medicine, 2011 , 5(2) : 134 -140 . DOI: 10.1007/s11684-011-0135-9

Acknowledgements

The present study was supported by the Shanghai Natural Science and Technology Foundation (10ZR142880) and the 973 Program of China (2009CB522901). We would like to thank Dr. Lyn Lowry of the Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, for her editorial support.
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