Acupuncture helps chronic lower back pain in older adults, producing greater and longer-lasting improvements compared with usual care alone. Additionally, it does so with very low rates of serious side effects, concludes a team which set out to generate data for a potential Medicare acupuncture reimbursement scheme for this patient cohort.
American researchers enrolled 789 patients, aged 65 upwards and mean age 74, with chronic lower back pain into a large multi-centre pragmatic trial. The group was randomised to receive either usual care alone, standard acupuncture plus usual care (8-15 treatments over 12 weeks), or enhanced acupuncture which involved a further four to six maintenance treatments over the next 12 weeks.
At six month follow-up, both acupuncture groups showed significantly greater reductions in disability scores compared with the group receiving usual care alone. This relative benefit persisted at 12 months. Serious adverse events were rare and similar across all groups, and fewer than one per cent were related to acupuncture.
The researchers conclude that acupuncture is an effective and safe treatment option for older adults with chronic lower back pain. It offers more sustained benefits and substantially lower adverse effects than drug therapy, the most prevalent pain management strategy for older adults with this condition. Given the increased likelihood of this patient group already being on other drugs, then to reduce the drug load and risk of interactions, acupuncture may become an important first-line treatment for them.
(Acupuncture for Chronic Low Back Pain in Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, 12 September 2025.)
