Positive expectations can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture treatment in knee osteoarthritis through identifiable changes in specific brain regions.
Ninety patients diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis were divided into an acupuncture group, a sham acupuncture group, and a waiting-list group for this study. The acupuncture group and the sham group underwent 12 sessions of 30-min acupuncture or sham acupuncture treatment respectively, while the waiting-list group received no interventions. Initial positive expectations of the patients were assessed. Neuroimaging and other clinical data was collected at the beginning and at the end of the treatment period. The researchers then analyzed the correlation between the collected brain imaging data and the clinical data.
The relationship between the patients' initial positive expectations and improvement in clinical measures of function was associated with changes in a specific part of the brain, the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and increased connectivity between that area and the medial prefrontal cortex in the true acupuncture group. These changes were not observed in the sham acupuncture group or the waiting-list group. The data thus indicates that higher positive expectations might boost the effectiveness of acupuncture treatment through mechanisms involving specific neural correlations.
