By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Can acupuncture help children?
Is acupuncture safe for children?
According to a large new study in the journal Pediatrics, the short answer is yes — in the hands of a trained practitioner. The study, the first large-scale systematic review on the safety of pediatric acupuncture, found that about one in 10 children had experienced mild side effects, like bruising and pain and numbness at the puncture site. More serious side effects, like infections and nerve impairment, were rare.
Large studies in the past have generally focused on acupuncture in adults and found similar complication rates, with serious side effects occurring in about five of every million treatment sessions.
Acupuncture is one of the most common alternative medicines in the United States, practiced by about three million people — mostly adults — every year. But it is also used with growing frequency in children to relieve pain, migraines and other complaints. About 150,000 children in the United States underwent acupuncture in 2007, according to government estimates. Whether acupuncture poses any particular hazards to children, however, has not been entirely clear.
In the latest study, researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada focused specifically on children, combing through data from 37 international studies. The authors cast a wide net, pooling data from high-quality randomized trials conducted over the past few decades as well as single case reports of injuries.
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