Grants Help Create New UMD Acupuncture Center

November 22, 2007 – 8:38 am

(AP) Baltimore, MD Two new centers to study acupuncture, herbal remedies and other aspects of increasingly popular Chinese medicine
are being formed by the University of Maryland with the help of two federal grants.

The first, nearly $6 million, grant establishes a Center of Excellence for Arthritis and Traditional Chinese Medicine Research at the University of Maryland. The second grant, for almost $4 million, establishes an International Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Both are under the university’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

“For centuries, millions of people have used the treatments of traditional Chinese medicine for all kinds of ailments. Now we have the opportunity to apply Western scientific standards to see if these therapies really help people and, if so, why,” said Dr. Brian Berman, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine and a professor of family medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The arthritis center plans to conduct a clinical trial on an 11-herb Chinese formula known as HLXL to see if it can help patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. Researchers at the center also plan to study how acupuncture affects the pain response in the body. That study follows previous research that found acupuncture to be a safe and effective complementary therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee.

“The acupuncture and osteoarthritis study followed 570 patients, and we found significant difference in the pain response for people receiving acupuncture compared to those who received a sham acupuncture treatment,” Berman said. “Now we want to know why that is, which may help us to explain the physiological mechanism involved in acupuncture.”

The International Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine will lead a team of international investigators looking at the use of traditional Chinese medicine for treating bowel disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome. The center will partner with Chinese University, Hong Kong; the University of Illinois, Chicago; and the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

The grants fund six studies altogether, three at each center, adding to the three dozen studies of alternative therapies already being conducted at the Center for Integrative Medicine, Berman said.

“We don’t have all the answers with just our standard methods of care,” Berman said. “We need to find out if there are other options with traditional Chinese medicine or other methods.”

The rising cost of prescription drugs, and concerns about the safety of drugs such as Vioxx, which has been linked to heart problems, are among the reasons for the increasing popularity of Chinese medicine.

“And, people also want ways that they can help themselves, to add some of their own control over their own health,” Berman said.

Robert Duggan, president and co-founder of the Tai Sophia Institute, said Western studies of Eastern therapies are encouraging because they provide evidence for the value of therapies that have been practiced for centuries.

“What Brian and his colleagues are doing is this scientific research documenting that, explaining in Western scientific terms the why and the how,” Duggan said.

The 350-student Laurel school teaches acupuncture, herbal medicine and other eastern traditions.

“That’s an extraordinary complement to this institute, where we’re training people to carry on these traditions,” Duggan said.

Duggan said acupuncture supporters would like to see federal funding to collect data at institutes like Tai Sophia, where 35,000 acupuncture treatments are administered each year in concert with other therapies.
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Tags: Acupuncture, herbal remedies, study center